LUANDA - On August 22, millions of voters in Angola will go to the polls for parliamentary elections that will also decide the country’s new leader.
They will elect a new president and members of parliament simultaneously with a single mark on a ballot paper under the country’s electoral system.
The incumbent President Joao Lourenço is seeking to extend his presidency with a second five-year term on the platform of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), which has been at the wheel for almost half a century.
National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the former rebel movement turned largest opposition party, is hoping its candidate, legislator Adalberto Costa Junior, can unseat him. Lourenço became president in 2017, handpicked by his predecessor Jose Eduardo dos Santos who stepped down after four decades of iron-fisted rule.
He presented himself as a man who could usher in a new era and a clear break from the past; painful memories of civil war, mismanagement of state resources and extreme poverty.
