Angola election date set

2007-12-27 18:43

Luanda - Angola's first legislative elections since its emergence from a devastating 27-year civil war will take place in September 2008, President Jose Eduardo dos Santos announced on Thursday.

Under pressure to push ahead with the vote after several postponements, dos Santos used his end-of-year address to set September 5 and 6 as polling days in the oil-rich country which is now Africa's fastest-growing economy.

His announcement received a cautious welcome from the former rebel Unita movement, now the main opposition party in the onetime Portuguese colony.

"In the year that will begin in a few days, Angolans will be summoned to take part in legislative elections on September 5 and 6," dos Santos said in state broadcasts.

"On those dates, people should express themselves with truth and no limitations, no violence and respect of different opinions."

The elections should be held in "a climate of peace and tolerance".

It is the first time dos Santos has given an exact date for the elections although he has previously said they had been pencilled in for between May and August 2008.

While the legislative vote is due to take place next year, presidential elections are scheduled for 2009 by which time dos Santos will have served a full 30 years in power.

He has yet to say whether he will seek re-election.

He first announced in December 2004 that elections would be held in 2006 but the timeline has slipped a number of times.

Angola last went to the polls in 1992 when dos Santos and his Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) won a first round of voting against the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita) in joint parliamentary and presidential elections.

A second round never took place however after Unita leader Jonas Savimbi refused to accept the results, and violence flared up.

Savimbi's death in 2002 proved decisive in ending the fighting which claimed half a million lives after it erupted in 1975, shortly after independence.

"This is fruit of pressure we have been putting on the government," Unita spokesperson Adiberto da Costa Jnr said.

However he also took a swipe at dos Santos, saying the announcement showed pre-conditions he had earlier attached to the elections were stalling tactics.

Da Costa said: "All this time the president has been saying that he needed a statement from the electoral commission and a list of all registered voters published in the official bulletin.

"These requirements have not been fulfilled but he set the date. So our question is why was this not done before? Obviously he has been playing games."

Da Costa also warned against elections being held over two days.

"We remember that in the 1992 election there was a power cut in all polling stations on the first night of the election. That's why we suspected there was rigging of elections," said da Costa.

"If the president really wants transparent and free and fair elections they should be held in one day."

Dos Santos has recently come under pressure over the delays to the vote with the Southern African Development Community (SADC) calling for polls to take place.

- AFP