Angolans vote in tight race where alienated youth may tilt balance

Angolans voted on Wednesday in a tight race in which the main opposition coalition had its best-ever chance of victory as millions of youth left out of its oil-fuelled booms were likely to express frustration with nearly five decades of MPLA rule. The ruling party remained the favourite, though the margin was narrow enough for a surprise UNITA victory, which could shift relations with global superpowers - with possibly less friendly ties with Russia.

Angolans voted on Wednesday in a tight race in which the main opposition coalition had its best-ever chance of victory as millions of youth left out of its oil-fuelled booms were likely to express frustration with nearly five decades of MPLA rule.

The ruling party remained the favourite, though the margin was narrow enough for a surprise UNITA victory, which could shift relations with global superpowers - with possibly less friendly ties with Russia. Since independence from Portugal in 1975, Angola has been run by the formerly Marxist People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), led since 2017 by President Joao Lourenco.

But an Afrobarometer survey in May showed the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola's (UNITA) opposition coalition, led by Adalberto Costa Junior, increasing its share to 22%, from 13% in 2019. That is still seven points behind the MPLA, but nearly half of voters were undecided. Many young people - under 25s make up 60% of the southern African country - were voting for the first time.

Angola is Africa's second biggest oil producer, but as with many poor nations sitting on oil wealth, decades of pumping billions of barrels of crude has done little for most except jack up the cost of living. Half of Angolans live in poverty and more than half of under-25s are unemployed. In the capital Luanda, one of the world's most expensive cities, jobless people ply petty trade in trash-strewn streets overshadowed by skyscrapers.

"The people have nothing - no water, no light, kids eat from rubbish bins," a 59-year-old former military officer who gave his name as Salomão told Reuters after voting in the neighbourhood of Nova Urbanização. President Lourenco, who was seeking re-election, urged voters after casting his ballot at Lusiada University in Luanda to go out and do the same.

"In the end, we will all win, democracy wins and Angola wins," Lourenco told reporters. TENSIONS OVER FEARS OF FRAUD

Many voters were less confident in Angolan democracy. An activist monitoring group, Mudei Movement, was planning to take pictures of results sheets at as many polling stations as possible, coordinator Luaty Beirao told Reuters on Tuesday, fearing the fraud that marred past polls.

UNITA urged voters to stay near polling stations after casting their ballots, a call many seemed to be heeding as polls closed in the evening. "The police said to vote and go home. I told them I would vote and sit down," said Severano Manuel, 28, in Cacuano, outside Luanda, as the polling station began counting.

"School is awful. Health system is awful. They get richer, and we suffer," he said, echoing the sentiments of other young voters around him. The electoral commission earlier said there had been no disturbances that could jeopardise the process, but tweaked vote-counting rules may delay official results by days, analysts say, raising tensions that could boil over into violence.

A UNITA victory could weaken decades of close ties with Moscow, for whom the MPLA was a Cold War proxy during Angola's 27-year civil war which ended in 2002. The United States backed UNITA. UNITA condemned "the invasion of Ukraine by Russia", Costa Junior said on Twitter. He also travelled to Brussels and Washington to build ties with Western partners before elections.

Russian Ambassador Vladimir Tararov was quoted in Angolan media in March as praising Angola for its neutrality in abstaining from the United Nations resolution condemning the Ukraine war. He lambasted UNITA for wanting to show it "stands with the West, the so-called civilised countries". "A UNITA win would mean a distancing of Angola from Russia," Charles Ray, head of the Africa Programme at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, told Reuters, but only if it can consolidate power over a pro-Russian military first.

Lourenco has tried to improve relations with Washington, and just before the elections applied to join a trade agreement with the European Union and southern African states that has been in force since 2016. Talks start in a few months.