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Angola: Voters await election results
A voter casts his ballot at a voting station in Luanda, Angola. PHOTO/AP
Angola tallied ballots Saturday from its elections, expected to keep President Jose Eduardo dos Santos party in power.
The National Electoral Commission said initial results would be announced later Saturday, but the people of Angola desperate for news on the elections swamped newspaper vendors, elbowing each other to grab a copy of the official Jornal de Angola.
“Many people want to buy the newspaper. Until now, we don’t have the results, and everyone wants the results,” said Luciano Calongo, 31, as he tussled in a crowd to get a copy off a motorcycle deliveryman in downtown Luanda.
Aside from the jostling around newspaper vendors, the normally vibrant capital Luanda was strangely quiet for a second day. Friday was declared a national holiday for the elections, and shops remained shuttered on Saturday while streets notorious for gridlock were mostly empty.
Angola State television repeated images of people around the country casting ballots at more than 10,000 schools that closed for a month to allow their transformation into polling stations.
“Voting proceeded in an orderly manner across the national territory,” proclaimed the front page of the government mouthpiece Jornal de Angola.
Counting began shortly after polls closed Friday, but the process will take several days as results are compiled from across the large southern African nation, where some returns have to be physically transported from remote regions.
The ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), in power since independence from Portugal in 1975, took 81 percent of the vote in the last elections in 2008, the first ballot held after the 27-year civil war ended in 2002.
