by Catarina Demony and Miguel Pereira
LUANDA, Aug 20 (Reuters) – The remains of former Angolan President Jos 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 the country’s general elections. August 24.
“The body of Jos Eduardo dos Santos has arrived in Angola after a long wait,” Marcy Lopes, minister of territorial administration, told reporters.
Angolans are being 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 Joo Loureno in power since independence in 1975, faces the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), led by Adalberto Costa Junior .
The opposition accuses the MPLA of seeking to politically exploit the repatriation of Jos Eduardo dos Santos, who ruled the country from 1979 to 2017, in view of the August 24 elections, the outcome of which is uncertain.
The ex-president died on July 8 in a clinic in Barcelona after suffering a heart attack 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 “Tchiz” dos Santos, who had taken legal action for an autopsy, citing a dcs “suspicious”. She also wanted a private burial in Barcelona.
A Barcelona court ruled on Wednesday, finding death of natural causes and authorizing the release of the body to his family and repatriation to Angola. (Report Catarina Demony, Miguel Pereira, Miguel Gomes, Sisipho Skweyiya and Siphiwe Sibeko Luanda; Graham Keeley Madrid and Andrei Khalip Lisbon, French version Sophie Louet)