Interim results for number of votes Wednesday’s elections mark a victory for the MPLA, which lost the eligible majority but retained an absolute majority. However, the massive defeat in Luanda, the country’s largest electoral arena, will force a great deal of internal reflection. “From a political point of view, it’s a huge defeat,” party spokesman Roy Falcao admitted to PÚBLICO, even playing down its effects a bit.
According to the provisional results of vote counting, issued this morning by the National Elections Committee, after counting 86.41% of the votes, The party led by Joao Lourenço She has 52.08% of the vote against 42.98% of her eternal rival Unita. But in Luanda Province, it was UNITA It stands out with 62.93% of the vote against only 33.06% of the MPLA, when 77.9% of the vote was counted.
“Luanda has always had expressive political significance, of course, but it is still a province, it elects five deputies, five deputies are elected in Uige, Namibe or Lunda,” said the former Benguela governor.
However, Roy Falcao admits that UNITA’s having more than 1 million votes and seeing his party now with just 589,000 votes, while it had more than 1.2 million in 2017, has an impact. Above all for practical reasons: “What is important is the volume of votes that can, in fact, benefit the opposition in terms of mandates on the national list.”
The spokesman explained that he would have to “analyze the situation with some privacy”, but ensure that it would not leave a trace in the party: “This is not the reason for dents, we have to find solutions, and now we all have to work to correct the mistakes that have occurred and restore strength naturally for five years from now.”
Although Roy Falcao ensures that this outcome leaves no marks, he certainly blames the “Hardcore Bloc” for the failure. “It derives, to a large extent, from our armed mass in the face of a range of situations we have experienced over time,” he justifies, without specifying what he was referring to.
“These are internal positions, they are issues of internal organization and management of the party itself, but these are matters that we will resolve in the near future,” he said.
according to temporary numbers Issued by the National Committee for the Liberation of Angola, the MPLA loses only, in addition to Luanda, in the province of Zaire, where UNITA received 98.59% of the votes counted, and had a comfortable advantage, receiving 52.25% of the vote against 36.14%.
A victory in almost all the provinces and in the National Register leaves Roy Falcao and his party comrades “satisfied”: “It’s always an electoral victory, of course we would like a dramatically better result, but that’s what democracy and governance are common for. So we have to accept the results.”
Falcão ensures that an absolute majority allows President Joao Lourenço It continues its policy quietly in the second term, while being open to dialogue with the opposition.
We have always been open to dialogue. In fact, we came from a qualified majority, and we made changes to the constitution with the full support of the opposition parties, as a result of the negotiations that took place. ”
