The announcement by Angola's government on 18 September 2007 that it has completed the major process of compiling a register of voters in the country in advance of national elections is welcome. After ten months of work, 7.5 million citizens have been enrolled on the electoral list. But will the elections promised (legislative in 2008, presidential in 2009) happen, and when? The recent history of the country counsels caution.
Gustaf Silfverstolpe is a member of the Africa advisory committee of Human Rights Watch.
He served with the United Nations in the then Republic of the Congo (1963-64) and in the Neutral Nations Supervisory Commission in Panmunjom, Korea (1965-66), and was an international election observer in the first free general elections in South Africa (1994). In 2002 he attended the United Nations-chaired peace talks in the Angolan capital, Luanda
Since the end of the civil war that had lasted from independence from Portuguese colonial rule in 1975 until February 2002, Angola has several times postponed its long-awaited national elections. Neither legislative nor presidential polls had been held in or after 1975. The only elections that have been held in Angola were in September 1992, with simultaneous legislative and presidential votes (though the second round of the latter were not held after allegations of irregularity in the first caused Jonas Savimbi of Unita to withdraw ).
Thus the members of parliament occupy seats in the national assembly on mandates from fifteen years ago. Angola has not had a constitutionally elected president for the whole of its thirty-two years as an independent state.
A land of promises
The peace agreement of 21 November 2002 was supposed to begin a new democratic era in Angola. It has not yet happened, but national elections are indeed a key step in rebuilding Angola after twenty-seven years of civil war.
On 5 December 2003, the state-owned Angola press agency (Angop) appeared to bring positive news: the Angolan president and head of the ruling Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), José Eduardo dos Santos, had declared at a party congress that the next Angolan elections would be like a sporting competition where all competitors would have the same opportunities and rights.
The president - who came to power in 1979 after the sudden death of Angola's first post-independence leader, Agostinho Neto - was quoted as saying: "When everybody has the same opportunities and rights, the victory only smiles to whoever presents the best resources and arguments." The MPLA, he added, sees individual freedoms as one of the main supporters of peace. "The freedoms of citizens should be sacred and preserved and should be based on tolerance, be it social or political".
On 24 August 2005, Angop reinforced the message: "Angolan prime minister, Fernando da Piedade Dias dos Santos, in Luanda assured that the elections expected for 2006 in the country will be open to national, regional and international observation."
Also on Angola in openDemocracy:
Ben Schiller, "The China model" (20 December 2005)
Lara Pawson, "Angola: the politics of exhaustion" (2 March 2007)
Lara Pawson, "Angola: worlds in collision" (11 April 2007)
The prime minister, addressing the closing of the first international seminar on the organisation of electoral processes, said that such verification is seen as "verification of the regularity of the electoral process, done by regional and international organisations."
In 2006, however, the promised elections were rescheduled for 2007; and on 21 December 2006, they were again postponed. A spokesman for the council of the republic - chaired by José Eduardo Dos Santos - said that the legislative polls would now take place in mid-2008 and presidential polls in 2009. By then, Dos Santos will have ruled Angola for thirty years.
An end to promises
Against this background it is important for the Angolan people that Angola builds on the completion of the registration process in September 2007; and that free and fair elections come at the earliest opportunity, followed soon after by a legitimate government based on those elections.
The elections matter as well to Angola's international standing and profile in the world. Angola and its neighbour the DR Congo have a similar history of decades of internal conflict and suffering. In 2006, the Congolese people waited in long lines to exercise their right to vote under national, regional and international observation. It was a signal of the country's desire, helped by the international community, to move beyond six years of brutal and devastating war,
Angola is a member of the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC). A twenty-one-member delegation of parliamentarians from the parliamentary forum (SADC-PF) visited Angola on 19-24 March 2007 and issued a report of their election observations. The report advised the government to publish a firm date for the election as soon as possible: "Angola is still in the group of countries where the election date is announced by the head of state at a convenient time. This is not in line with the forum norms and standards for elections in the SADC region."
One of the reasons why it matters to announce the date well in advance of holding elections is to facilitate both genuine, open debate among civil society, and full preparation by opposition parties. The long post-1975 period of conflict makes it vital that Angolans have the opportunity to experience the elections as a normal and healthy exercise of their citizenship rights, in a context of trust between the different stakeholders.
If clarity on the actual date of the elections in 2008 and 2009 is established, it will have a beneficial effect both for Angolans and for the national, regional and international observers who are needed to verify the integrity of the election process. In Angola - as in the region as a whole - democracy is the best assurance of lasting regional stability, transparency in government and inclusive economic development. An inclusive, fair election schedule is a fundamental part of progress in this direction.
