Election officials said in the early hours of Thursday that preliminary results from Wednesday’s election showed the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola , in power for nearly five decades, had garnered 60.65% after a third of the votes were counted.
Thursday’s announcement of provisional results by the National Electoral Commission was surprisingly soon after polls closed; in 2017, the elections’ final results were announced two weeks later.“Our polling centres clear provisional indicators of UNITA’s winning trend in all provinces of our country,” he told a news conference.
The last, decade-long bout of fighting was triggered in 1992when UNITA contested election results giving the MPLA a clear majority. That triggered a re-start of the civil war which lasted until the two sides made a peace agreement in 2002.