Angola’s ruling party is set to extend its reign for another five years, giving it a total of 52 years in power. The main opposition said it would challenge the results of Wednesday’s vote.

Incumbent President Joao Lourenco of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola party, known by its Portuguese acronym MPLA, has won a second five-year term in office after garnering 51% of the Wednesday presidential vote with more than 97% of the votes tallied.

Lourenco’s main challenger, Adalberto Costa Jr. of the National Union for the Liberation of Angola, or UNITA, got 44% of the vote. In the last election in 2017, UNITA received 26% of the presidential votes.

The ruling party won 124 parliament seats out of the 220 up for grabs.

The leading opposition group has questioned the transparency of the electoral commission’s presidential results and is yet to accept the outcome of Wednesday’s vote.

The ruling party’s popularity in this election had dropped by 10 percentage points from the previous election when they got 61% of the vote cast.

Angola’s fifth general election campaign focused on economic issues and poverty, with many voters complaining that the political class had abandoned them, despite the country’s oil resources.
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