Thousands of Angolans abroad to be voting remotely for the first time in their country’s election next week.
About 14-million Angolans at home and abroad will vote on August 24 in probably the tightest, tensest race since the first multiparty election in 1992.
There will be 2,000 Angolan and at least 50 international observers keeping an eye on the polls, but in a country twice the size of France they will be stretched.
Angola, second-biggest oil producer in Africa and one of its most unequal countries, emerged from civil war in 2002, after a 27-year struggle between former liberation movements, the MPLA, which has ruled since Angola’s independence from Portugal in 1975, and Unita. More than 500,000 people were killed.
President João Lourenço of the MPLA is seeking a second five-year term but main opposition party Unita looks increasingly popular.
Only 22,000 out of the 400,000 Angolans abroad registered to vote, a possible sign of how little faith they have in the process. Some complained they could not register as they lived too far from consulates or were not given enough time to organize paperwork.
Source : Reuters
