by Catarina Demony and Miguel Pereira
LUANDA (Reuters) – The remains of former Angolan President José Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain last July, were repatriated to Luanda on Saturday evening as a tense campaign draws to a close for general elections on 24 august.
“The body of José Eduardo dos Santos has arrived in Angola after a long wait,” Marcy Lopes, minister of territorial administration, told reporters.
Angolans are called to the polls on Wednesday to appoint the National Assembly which will elect the leader of the majority list for a five-year presidential term.
The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), the party of outgoing President João Lourenço in power since independence in 1975, faces the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), of Adalberto Costa Junior.
The opposition accuses the MPLA of seeking to politically exploit the repatriation of José Eduardo dos Santos, who led the country from 1979 to 2017, in view of the August 24 elections, with an uncertain outcome.
The ex-president died on July 8 in a clinic in Barcelona after suffering a cardiac arrest on June 23.
His funeral is scheduled to take place on August 28, MPLA spokesman Rui Falcao said.
The fate of the former president was at the heart of a legal dispute between his widow, Ana Paula, and one of his daughters, Welwitschea “Tchizé” dos Santos, who had taken legal action for an autopsy, citing a suspicious death. She also wanted a private burial in Barcelona.
A Barcelona court ruled on Wednesday, concluding that he died of natural causes and authorizing the handing over of the body to his family and his repatriation to Angola.
(Report Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira, Miguel Gomes, Sisipho Skweyiya and Siphiwe Sibeko in Luanda; Graham Keeley in Madrid and Andrei Khalip in Lisbon, French version Sophie Louet)