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News > World

Joao Lourenco is Re-Elected as President of Angola

  • People holding a photo of President Joao Lourenco, 2022.

    People holding a photo of President Joao Lourenco, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @LaLibreAfrique

Published 26 August 2022
Opinion

The election results extend the hegemony of the MPLA, the only party that has governed this African country since its independence from Portugal in 1975.

After counting 97.03 percent of the votes cast on Wednesday, the National Electoral Commission (CNE) announced that President Joao Laurenco, a member of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), is re-elected with 51 percent of the votes.

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The MPLA obtained just over 3.16 million votes, which would allow it to have 124 out of 220 seats in the National Assembly. The main opposition party, Adalberto Costa Junior's National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), obtained 44 percent of the votes, which translated into about 90 seats, the best result of its history as a political organization.

According to the Angolan Constitution, the leader of the party winning the most seats automatically becomes the President of the Republic. Although vote counting has not yet finished, preliminary results give Lourenco his second consecutive five-year term.

The results also extend the hegemony of the MPLA, the only party that has governed Angola since its independence from Portugal in 1975. However, it suffers a setback compared to the 2017 elections, when it won 61.1 percent of the votes and won 150 seats in parliament.

At a great distance from the MPLA and UNITA appear the remaining six parties that took part in the elections. Among them, the Social Renovation Party (PRS) stand out with 1.13 percent of the votes, the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA) with 1.05 percent, and the Humanist Party of Angola (PHA) with 1,01 percent. Each of these three parties obtained two seats in parliament.

The CNE spokesman Lucas Quilundo affirmed that the counting of the votes continues and that in the next few hours the definitive results "without major changes" will be disclosed.

On Wednesday, Angola held calm general elections in which 14.3 million citizens out of 33 million people were called to vote.

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