Brazil judge halts Sao Paulo airport terminal work
13 de setembro de 2011Gastão Vieira is to be new minister of Tourism
16 de setembro de 2011With the whereabouts and functional situation of Col. Muammar Qaddafi
unknown, the president of Angola, José Eduardo dos Santos, has become
Africa’s longest serving ruler. He took office as president in 1979.
The Portuguese first arrived in Angola in 1482. In 1575, they sent a
hundred Portuguese families and four hundred troops there to begin a
colony. The colony obtained its independence four hundred years later,
in 1974, after over a decade of war and a coup d’etat in Portugal.
The principal groups leading the struggle for Angolan independence
immediately began a civil war that lasted until 2002. The civil war,
mainly between the MPLA, led by dos Santos, the FNLA and the UNITA,
devastated the country, killed an estimated 1.5 million people and left
over four million internally displaced (a third of the country’s
population).
José Eduardo dos Santos, born in 1942, is the second president of
Angola since it became independent. He has an engineering degree from a
university in the old Soviet Union (Baku, Azerbaijan). Before Angola
became independent, he held prominent positions in the MPLA. Upon
independence, he became the Foreign Minister, playing an important role
in getting diplomatic recognition for the new country. When the first
president, Agostinho Neto, died in September, 1979, dos Santos became
president of the MPLA, commander in chief of the Armed Forces and
president of Angola (but not recognized as such by the FNLA and UNITA).
In 1992, Angola held presidential elections. Dos Santos got 49% of the
votes, to 40% for Jonas Savimbi of the UNITA. As neither candidate got
over 50% there was supposed to be a runoff, but Savimbi claimed the
election was rigged and quit. The civil war began again and dos Santos
remained in office as president.
The civil war only ended in 2002, with the death of Savimbi.
Dos Santos has promised new presidential elections that never took
place a number of times. His party, the MPLA, consolidated a large
majority in the congress following elections in 2008 (the first since
1992) controlling over 80% of the seats in the legislature. In 2010 a
constitutional amendment was passed that allows the party with the most
seats in congress to automatically name its leader president.
Recent demonstrations by Angolan youths have demanded that dos Santos
leave the presidency and that a more democratic government be installed.
The police have arrested dozens of youths and put them on trial for
disorderly conduct and disobedience with regard to laws governing public
demonstrations.
Yesterda (September 13), in Luanda, the first secretary of the MPLA,
Ernesto Muangala, declared that the right of people to assemble is part
of the party program. “This right is an indispensable condition for
democracy. It is an essential part of the process of finding concrete
solutions for the problems of community life,” said Muangala, in
comments to a government news agency, Angola Press.
Muangala, who is also a state governor, admitted that the MPLA had to
be more imaginative in order to inspire and support initiatives by
Angolan society. He said the party recognizes the high value of citizen
initiatives and seeks to support and stimulate their active engagement
in the rebuilding and development of Angola.
