The Elections

Just over a week ago, elections were held in Angola. The last elections, in 1992 had resulted in a return to civil war. So although eerybody was telling everybody else that this would not happen this time, there was some nervousness in the air. We (foreigneers) were told to stay away from large gatherings and such, because you never know when a clash between MPLA and UNITA supporters might happen.

In the end, the election campaigns went rather smoothly and there have been very few incidents, as far as I know. On election day, all was quiet. I live right infront of a voting station so I can tell you first hand that there were, at least there, no problems whatsoever. That is to say, I suppose that the people manning the voting stations found battling boredom quite a challenge in the second part of the afternoon. In the early morning, there was quite a queue, but by mid-morning anyone wanting to vote could do so withi 5 minutes and in the afternoon no-one turned up.

The results are already out and there was really no contest: MPLA won more than 80% of the vote. The one thing we will never know, though is which percentage of teh people went voting. No-one knows how many people live in Angola, with estimates from 14 to 20 million inhabitants and therefore it is hard to say whether 4 million votes is good or disappointing. Assuming that there are about 16 million people of whom about half are eligible to vote, I suppose 50% is not a bad show.

Which leads to the question why so many people voted for the MPLA. Because there is enough rumour and talk about corruption, Luanda is not exactly safe and there is a lot of poverty. Quite enough reason to expect a somewhat closer result than the one we got. But the other side is that life in Angola has become a lot better in the last four years. The government no longer has to spend vast amounts of money on the armed conflict and the oil price has been sky high for the last four years. So there is a lot of money around to spend on infrastructure, health and education. And even if there are doubts about the transparency of the system, the fact is that at least thousands of miles of road have been repaired, schools and health posts are being built, new affordable housing is constructed and new wells and boreholes are sunk. So perhaps people just voted for the devil they knew.