Oil-rich and impoverished, Angola votes
The African nation goes to the polls to elect lawmakers for the first time in 16 years. The ruling party is expected to win, but there is a hunger for change.
LUANDA, ANGOLA — Voters in Angola, one of Africa's biggest oil producers, will take part in parliamentary elections for the first time in 16 years today, with analysts forecasting peaceful balloting and a victory for the ruling MPLA party, already in power 33 years.
The first and last time Angola voted, in 1992, the loser, rebel UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi, denounced the results, took up arms and fought for an additional 10 years.
From the fight for independence from Portugal, which concluded successfully in 1975, until Savimbi's death in combat in 2002, Angola was almost constantly a battleground. Six years of peace and record oil prices have transformed it into one of the world's fastest growing economies -- yet one of its most unequal.
Human Rights Watch and the London-based think tank Chatham House have questioned whether the elections can be free and fair, given the ruling party's dominance of the state media. Human Rights Watch has also cited cases of violence and intimidation.
Opposition critics accuse the MPLA, which has run Angola for the entire post-colonial period, of using state resources to win the elections, for which final results are not expected until sometime next week. Both sides say they want to reduce poverty and unemployment and build schools, hospitals and infrastructure. The MPLA claims credit for an economic boom brought about by high oil prices, but UNITA says few have reaped the riches and that a government that has not delivered decent living standards during more than three decades in power will not suddenly start keeping its promises.
Despite massive foreign investment and oil production of 2 million barrels a day, Angola remains firmly embedded at the bottom end of the United Nations index that measures living standards and poverty, ranked 162 of 177 countries.
Angola is also rated as one of the world's most corrupt countries by the government watchdog group Transparency International, which says the nation is as corrupt as Nigeria, Angola's rival as the continent's biggest oil producer.
The stakes in Angola's vote are high: Shareholders in Angola's most powerful oil companies and banks include many government ministers, generals, police officers, relatives of longtime President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and of other government officials closely tied to the MPLA.
