Angola's ruling party on the way to crushing victory

Johannesburg/Luanda - With nearly 55 per cent of the ballots counted, Angola's ruling MPLA party seem headed for a massive victory of more than 80 per cent of the vote in the country's first parliamentary elections in 16 years, reports said Sunday.

According to the state electoral commission, the MPLA party of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos was ahead in 17 of 18 provinces. Should the results be confirmed, the MPLA would have more than the two-thirds majority needed to change the constitution.

The official results are expected at the earliest by the middle of next week.

The largest opposition party UNITA had so far received little more than 10 per cent of the vote. The rest went to smaller parties.

UNITA disputed the results due to problems during the two-day polling which began Friday. Independent observers such as those from the European Union spoke only of poor preparation that affected some parts of the capital Luanda.

Considered a MPLA stronghold, Luanda contains 20 per cent of the country's electorate.

Independent election observers from the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) said that despite some problems in Luanda, the vote had been "peaceful, free, transparent and credible."

European Union monitors said poor preparations for the balloting had caused problems in some parts of the capital, Luanda. The EU group of 118 observers from 20 EU states, as well as Switzerland and Norway, is to present its preliminary report on Monday.

The elections to the 220-seat National Assembly on Friday and Saturday, while deemed unlikely to dent the majority of dos Santos' MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola), are seen as a dry run for presidential elections scheduled for next year.

In 1992, the last time country voted, UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi rejected his narrow defeat in the presidential elections by dos Santos and resumed a guerrilla war that ended with his death a decade later. At least half a million people are thought to have died in the war and millions were displaced. Dos Santos meanwhile remains in power after 29 years.

After Nigeria, Angola is now Africa's second-largest oil producer, pumping out close to 2 million barrels of crude a day. A member of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) since 2007, Angola is the number one exporter of oil to China. (dpa)

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