Ruling party predicts victory in Angola's first post-war vote

LUANDA - Angola's ruling party on Saturday predicted a large victory in elections which observers called "free and transparent" despite delays that marred the oil-rich country's first peacetime poll.

The leftwing MPLA party, which has been in power for over three decades, said that based on preliminary results it said it had seen, the outcome of the election surpassed its expectations.

"We are going to win big," Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola spokesman Rui Falcao told Portugese news agency Lusa just after the polls officially closed Saturday at 7:00 pm (1800 GMT).

The vote got off to a rocky start Friday with chaotic scenes at polling stations in the capital Luanda that did not get ballot papers and other voting supplies.

The electoral commission decided to extend voting for one day for some polling stations but Angola's main opposition party Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) has called on Angola's Constitutional court to annul the vote.

Despite the initial confusion Angolans turned out in force Friday and Saturday to vote for the first time since the 2002 end of fighting that claimed 500,000 lives.

In the capital Luanda, many voters came back to cast their ballots after some polling stations on Friday did not open at all or were forced to close early because they ran out of ballot papers.

In the poor Samba neighbourhood in Luanda, 30-year-old Arlindo Dangeroux managed to vote Saturday afternoon after being turned away from the polling station Friday.

"It was a very difficult day yesterday, I was in the queue but it was very crowded and then the ballot papers ran out and I didn't vote," he told AFP.

"I'm very happy, it is the first time I have voted, I never had the opportunity before."

Angola's main opposition party UNITA, which already denounced the run-up to the vote as unfair, said Saturday that it plans to contest the results.

"UNITA has already contested this election. We will continue to voice our argument," Kamalata Numa, UNITA secretary general, said on the party's radio station.

"The first step is to raise our issues with the CNE (electoral commission) and later we will also involve the constitutional court on the unconstitutionality of the electoral process," Numa added Saturday.

Despite the opposition challenge to the vote international observers seemed satisfied with the elections.

The observer mission of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) regional bloc said the vote was "peaceful, free, transparent and credible" and reflected "the will of the people".

The head of the European Union observer mission, who on Friday morning called the voting process a disaster, was more cautious.

"There have been problems and they're trying to change them," EU observation chief Luisa Morgantini said.

"We'll see what will happen," she added.

The EU mission said it would delay its official report on the elections, seen as a popularity test for President Jose Eduardo dos Santos ahead of planned presidential elections next year, until Monday.

According to UNITA the fact that the problems with polling stations affected mainly the poor neighbourhoods of Luanda where 90 per cent of the capitals five to seven million inhabitants live is a deliberate tactic to discourage voting in areas where the MPLA was not expected to get a majority.

Angola has a booming economy that stems from its vast oil and diamond riches but over two-thirds of its people remain mired in poverty, living on less than two dollars a day.

The state media has spoken of a massive turn-out with millions of voters but no official figures have been given yet. About half of Angola's 17 million inhabitants had registered to vote.

Angola attempted to hold an election in 1992 - but UNITA claimed it was fixed, withdrew and new hostilities started.

Separately, the Portuguese journalists union SJ protested with the Angolan government after five Portuguese media were refused visas and could not report on the election in the former Portuguese colony, an SJ statement said.

On Thursday the weekly Expresso and Visao, the daily newspaper Publico as well as the Sic television network and Catholic radio station Renascenca said they had not received a reply to their visa applications.