200809032050 | Angola for elections on Friday

Angola for elections on Friday

Luanda - Angolan political parties were set to wrap up an intensive election campaign on Wednesday with mass rallies as Africa's biggest oil producer prepared for its first peacetime election on Friday. The oil and diamond-rich country where millions live in poverty despite sky-rocketing economic growth sees the vote as a crucial test for its democracy six years after a peace deal which ended a bloody 27-year civil war.

"These elections mean to me freedom that democracy can bring after 30 years of civil conflict. The people have at this moment, the possibility to choose who in fact should govern," said Domingos Costa, a religious leader from the Samba district of Luanda told AFP.

This will be the first attempt since aborted 1992 elections to hold a poll, and concerns have been raised that the run-up to the vote has been one sided with the Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos dominating the campaign.

The leftwing MPLA was originally a Marxist-Leninist group, but is now nominally social democratic. Their main rivals in the vote are the former rebels of the pro-western National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita).

In Angola's capital Luanda the austere image of Dos Santos bears down from massive banners and posters while the streets are awash with the black, red and yellow of the ruling party.

Credibility undermined

MPLA members, dressed in the party colours, speed around on motorbikes chanting slogans and revving their engines as they urge citizens to vote in their party's favour.

Some observers have said that the credibility of the vote could by undermined by the dominance of the MPLA.

"The perceived homogeneity between the state and the MPLA, giving the incumbent regime an unfair advantage over other political parties, is one such issue," that could undermine credibility according to a pre-election report by independent think tank, the London-based Chatham House.

The former rebel movement Unita has created little momentum since signing the 2002 peace agreement given the MPLA's control of the country's huge oil and diamond reserves.

Some eight million voters have registered for the election in a 12-month campaign across the country's 18 provinces, and many Angolans look forward to the opportunity to cast their ballots.

"This election means change, the opportunity to choose a better party," 27-year-old university student Maria Serafina said.

Friday's poll marks Angola's first vote since an aborted election in 1992 sparked renewed violence when the late Unita leader Jonas Savimibi refused to accept results that gave the MPLA 49.5% to Unita?s 40%, and pulled out of a run-off vote.

Few here expect a return to the bloody civil war, which ended with Savimbi's death in 2002.

However, the opposition has complained of "a climate of threats, intimidation and violence" in the run-up to the vote, saying four of its supporters had been killed.