"I believe that these elections correspond to a step forward from the point of view of democratization", said the president of the Socialist Party (PS), Carlos César, an observer invited by the President of the Republic and the National Electoral Commission (CNE).
For the socialist politician, the election is running "reasonably close to the most optimistic views that could exist for its outcome", and the fact that there is doubt as to the winner "is a sign that there is a minimum of democratic density in the electoral act".
The observer concluded that the election "went with some ease", recalling that for the first time there was voting in the diaspora and that the number of international observers was "frankly increased and diversified".
"I verified throughout the day that the electoral rolls are accessible to the delegates who are present there, they have photographs, people are identified with an ink mark that does not allow them to double the vote, there are delegates from political parties - more than a political party - in all polling stations in the country", he exemplified.
Admitting that not everything is "concrete and scrupulously respected", Carlos César stressed that, from the point of view of electoral law, "in general, [the process] corresponds to the profile of these regulations, for example, in European countries".
Former social democratic minister José Luís Arnaut, an observer also invited by President João Lourenço, said, after following the election day at around 30 polling stations in and around Luanda and after speaking with other observers in other areas of the country, that "the process was completely normal".
"What I could see from what I saw with my eyes and what I heard from the presidents of the polling stations in the most significant assemblies here in the Luanda region (...) was that the process took place with all normality and there were no any situations," he said.
"Eventually, there may have been some problems here and there, but these are everywhere and they are not significant", he said, stressing that "the normality of the electoral process is a positive sign to point out, which also stems from the normality of the campaign".
The electoral campaign, underlined Arnaut, was "very lively, very intense and very participated, but it ran within complete normality", an important sign of the "evolutionary democratic process that Angola is experiencing".
The also social democrat António Rodrigues, an individual observer invited by the CNE, agreed that "everything went according to what was planned and that was included in all the indications and instructions" of the electoral commission.
After visiting 12 polling stations, corresponding to around 40 or 50 polling stations, Rodrigues said he had not received any reports of incidents.
"I must say that I found an electoral process organized in a fantastic way, extraordinarily professional, as we do not find, for example, in Portugal, and nothing indicates, at least that we are aware of, that anything has gone wrong", he said.
