Angolans voted on Friday in a one-sided election expected to keep President Jose Eduardo dos Santos at the helm of Africa’s No 2 oil producer, but the long-serving leader faces swelling popular pressure to share the nation’s riches more evenly.
In the seaside capital Luanda, where gleaming new office and apartment blocks contrast with sprawling, grimy slums, and in cities and towns across the southern African state, polling stations opened in schools and other public buildings.
Dos Santos’ ruling MPLA is expected to win comfortably at the expense of smaller and weaker opposition parties, extending the president’s nearly 33 years in power which make him Africa’s second longest serving leader after Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.