One of Angola’s main opposition parties has announced that it will contest the election results, alleging electoral irregularities following the win by the ruling MPLS party.
According to election commission officials, MPLA won the Wednesday vote with over 61 percent and about 150 of the 220 seats in parliament.
The win means defense minister Joao Lourenco will take over the presidency from long-serving Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has ruled the Southern African nation for 38 years.
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) has accused the government of manipulating the vote, for example by depriving opposition groups of media access.
“We do not accept these results, not because they show the MPLA in front, but because we don’t think they are true,” said deputy party leader Rafael Massanga Savimbi.
He said UNITA had found “substantial differences” between its own tallies at voting stations and those of the electoral commission.
“We are going to the courts,” said Savimbi, son of the UNITA founder Jonas Savimbi, whose death in 2002 during the civil war against Dos Santos’s forces paved the way for a ceasefire after 27 years of fighting.
“It’s a crime to manipulate or distort the people’s will,” he said.
The MPLA was widely expected to win the election, though some saw the win as a win for outgoing President Dos Santos too.
