Angolan parties wrap up campaigning as tense election nears

Adalberto Costa Junior, leader of Angola’s UNITA party

Angolan presidential candidates on Monday wrapped up a month-long campaign ahead of this week’s election which is likely to be a tense standoff between a ruling party in power for decades and an opposition with growing appeal among youth.

The MPLA, led by João Lourenço since 2017, has governed Africa’s second-biggest oil producer since independence from Portugal in 1975.

But longtime opposition party UNITA is stronger than ever, as anger grows at government failures to convert vast oil wealth into better living conditions for all.

More than 14 million Angolans are eligible to vote and will elect the president and 220 members of parliament simultaneously, with a single mark on the ballot paper.

An Afrobarometer survey in May showed the number of Angolans favouring UNITA, led by the charismatic Adalberto Costa Júnior, had increased to 22 per cent from 13 per cent in 2019, still seven points behind the MPLA.

Nearly half of voters were undecided.

A report by the Institute for Security Studies said that if an MPLA win is perceived as fraudulent, unrest could follow.

UNITA leader Costa Junior told Reuters on Sunday that contesting the election result was not off the table.