Angola’s opposition party has reportedly filed a complaint against the election results that declared the governing MPLA party as the winner of last week’s election, reported The Reuters.
On Tuesday, the main opposition party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) said that it has submitted an objection to the results.
“UNITA reiterates that it will not recognize the results announced by the National Electoral Commission until the complaints already in its possession are resolved,” the party said in a statement.
According to Angola’s electoral regulations, If UNITA’s written complaint is rejected, the party can take the objection to the Constitutional Court, which must rule on the complaint within 72 hours.
This year’s election was the most closely fought election since independence from Portugal in 1975. About 6.4 million of the total 14 million registered Angolans voted in the election. Voter turnout, however, was low on voting day with just 45.7% of registered voters casting their ballots.
On Monday, the electoral commission announced that the ex-Marxist People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) got 51.17% of the votes, prolonging its nearly five decades of uninterrupted rule.
The main opposition party, UNITA, got 43.95%, its best result ever, according to the electoral body.
In its complaint, the opposition party claimed that according to its calculations it should have won the election with 64% of the vote. It said that its representative at the commission was not granted the right to record in the result sheet his complaint about the electoral results.
The leader of UNITA, Adalberto Costa Junior, has repeatedly said in the past few days that he does not recognise the results of the vote and that complaints have been filed.
UNITA legally challenged its loss in the 2017 election but the courts ruled in favor of the MPLA.
