Angola’s president would no longer be directly elected by the people under a new constitution approved by parliament.
Critics say giving parliament the power to name the president would only further entrench Angolan President Eduardo Dos Santos, who has been in power since 1979. Dos Santos has said adopting the method South Africa and others in the region use to pick a president is more efficient and less costly.
The main opposition party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), boycotted Thursday’s vote on the proposed constitution, which was approved 186-0, with two abstentions.
The charter must now be approved by the Constitutional Court, a step seen as a formality.
Even as multi-party elections become the norm across Africa after decades of dictatorship and one-party rule, the entrenchment of powerful parties is seen as undermining democracy. In many cases, the parties in power are embraced by voters for having led campaigns against colonial rule or, in the case of South Africa, apartheid.
It becomes almost impossible for opposition politicians to make inroads when an iconic party also has control of the state broadcaster — often the medium with the widest reach in Africa — earns the loyalty of a civil service that comes to see itself as part of the party and fails to control corruption.
Dos Santos is under pressure from rights groups at home and abroad to strengthen democracy, but at times he seems to see the effort as a distraction from rebuilding a country devastated by war.
Dos Santos’ Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has been in power since Agostinho Neto became the first president of independent Angola in 1975. Upon Neto’s death in 1979, then-planning minister dos Santos became president.
At a party meeting late last year, dos Santos said presidential elections would be delayed from last year to at least 2012, and indicated then that he preferred for voters to elect a parliament, which would then elect the president. That ensures the party that controls parliament controls the presidency.
The next parliamentary elections are in 2012. The 2008 parliamentary vote, the first in 16 years, was won overwhelmingly by dos Santos’ MPLA.
Dos Santos last contested an election in 1992, during a break in a civil war that started in 1975 after the country gained independence from Portugal. Fighting broke out anew after UNITA refused to accept results showing it had lost the 1992 polls.
The war ended in 2002, when the army killed UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi.
Angola is rich in diamonds and oil, but its people are impoverished and its infrastructure in ruins.
With oil prices falling, the IMF gave Angola a US$1.4 billion loan in November. To get the loan, Angola had to agree to regular, public reviews of its finances.
Angola ranks among the world’s most corrupt countries, according to watchdog Transparency International, which surveys businesses and experts to measure perceived levels of public sector corruption around the globe.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS