Campaigns have intensified in recent days and both parties claim to be the best placed to guarantee voters' preferences.
On the side of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), candidate João Lourenço bet on showing work done, promising to finish in the next term what he left undone in the five years he was in the presidency of the country, blaming the covid-19 pandemic.
The candidate of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Adalberto da Costa Júnior, focused on the "fatigue" and mistakes of the MPLA, which has not yet managed to lift Angolans out of poverty and focused on promises in local elections - which João Lourenço had promised to implement and failed – and in a constitutional revision that would remove excesses of power from the President.
Corruption was one of the themes present in the campaign, with João Lourenço insisting on this flag, taking the opportunity to attack his opponent by trying to associate the UNITA campaign with the "marimbondos" (a species of wasp, symbolizing the corrupt), while Adalberto da Costa Júnior insisted that the "marimbondos" are in the ruling party.
The electoral period was also marked by the death on July 8, in Barcelona, of former president José Eduardo dos Santos, and by the family feud that followed, a judicial and diplomatic tug of war in which his widow, Ana Paula, got the better of dos Santos, and her three children, supported by the Government, against the older children who are on a collision course with the regime and will not be present at the funeral.
The arrival of the body, last Saturday, coincided with the final act of the MPLA campaign, a gigantic rally in which the party president and presidential candidate made no reference to his predecessor, although UNITA did not fail to point to political use case.
The executive has not yet announced the official date for the state funeral he intends to hold, but if it takes place on August 28, as reported by MPLA leaders, it will still take place in the aftermath of the fifth elections, which are expected to be close.
The National Electoral Commission (CNE), an entity that throughout this period has been the main target of criticism from opposition parties, created 13,238 polling stations, made up of 26,443 polling stations, in the national territory, and 26 polling stations with 45 polling stations. voting abroad, for which 105,952 members were recruited.
Of the total of 14,399 million voters, who will be able to vote between 7 am and 5 pm, 22,560 are from the diaspora, spread across 25 cities in 12 countries in Africa, Europe and America.
In Portugal, around 7600 Angolans are registered to vote.
In the electoral race, in addition to the traditional rivals MPLA and UNITA, six other political formations are running: the National Liberation Front of Angola (FNLA), the Social Renewal Party (PRS) and the National Patriotic Alliance (APN), the Nationalist Party for Justice. (P-NJANGO), the Humanist Party of Angola and the coalition Convergence Broad for the Salvation of Angola - Electoral Coalition (CASA-CE).
