One
of the longest serving African President, Jose Eduardo dos Santos has
hinted that he will quit politics after his tenure expires.
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos
Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos confirmed on Friday he
will not run in this year’s presidential election, calling an end to 38
years as head of state, but he will retain control of the powerful
ruling party.
Dos Santos, aged 74, said in March 2016 he would not run in
elections due in August but opponents remained suspicious given he had
reneged on similar pledges during nearly four decades running Angola.
Defence Minister Joao Lourenco will be the presidential candidate
for the ruling People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA),
dos Santos said, ahead of a party meeting where candidates for the vote
will be confirmed.
Dos Santos, will remain president of the MPLA, retaining sweeping
powers that include choosing parliamentary candidates and appointing top
posts in the army and police.
His inscrutable public demeanour belies his tight control of
Angola, a former Portuguese colony where he has overseen an oil-backed
economic boom and the reconstruction of infrastructure devastated by a
27-year civil war that ended in 2002.
The MPLA won parliamentary majorities in the three elections since
the end of the war. Lourenco, deputy president of the MPLA, is viewed as
a dos Santos ally.
Angola, an OPEC member and Africa’s second biggest oil exporter,
has been hit hard by the slump in global crude prices in the last two
years. Oil export revenues account for more than 90 percent of foreign
exchange revenues.
Inspite pf its oil wealth, most people live in poverty and critics
accuse dos Santos of enriching himself and his associates, including his
billionaire daughter, Isabel, named by Forbes as Africa’s richest
woman.
Isabel dos Santos was appointed by her father as head of the state
oil company Sonangol last year and his son Jose Filomeno is chairman of
Angola’s sovereign wealth fund.
-NAN
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