Transparency essential for credible polls

Transparency and a clearly defined role for an independent electoral commission are vital if Angola is to avoid the mistakes made during its last national poll more than a decade ago, a former election official told IRIN. Onofre dos Santos, an Angolan lawyer with close links to the opposition FNLA, and director-general of the national election council in Angola's 1992 elections, did not foresee a return to conflict. But he feared that the lack of a transparent process could lead to delays in the electoral timetable, with frustration and unrest among opposition parties and, ultimately, political instability. Angola's last ballot, held during a brief lull in the fierce 27-year civil war, was deemed generally free and fair by the international community, but the then rebel group and now opposition party, UNITA, contested the results and returned to war against the ruling MPLA party. Angola has been at peace since April 2002, and is to hold national elections next year, but some observers caution that it is slipping behind in its groundwork, a comment Dos Santos said could still prove valid. "Angola is preparing right now - we have electoral projects from all political parties, which is a good sign that Angola is going in the right direction. Is it going at the right speed? I have my doubts," he told IRIN ahead of the launch of his book on the 1992 elections, titled 'A Lesson for the Future'. "The key to change [the] bad reputation of the 1992 elections is to train people; to increase the capacity of ordinary people to understand the electoral process," he said. "When everyone thinks about elections they only think about results, and only of favourable results. What we need is to make sure that the results are the expression of the real will of the people." Opposition parties and civil society groups are already voicing their concern that the process running up to the 2006 ballot is unclear and unfair. The chief bone of contention is the creation and mandate of an electoral commission, which should be independent and take care of all the stages, including the critical task of voter registration. However, the MPLA has said that registering electors - a huge undertaking in a country where many who fled fighting during the war still have no identity documents - is a job for the government. Indeed, the government announced earlier this month that it planned to start registering voters in May. According to Dos Santos, only the government has the requisite personnel and know-how for such a task, but he stressed that an independent national electoral commission should be created in time, and with sufficient supervisory powers to scrutinise the process. "If they start [voter registration] in May, I believe that May will be the last date to appoint the [electoral] body. Not only that, but also organs in all the provinces, municipalities and communes, because if not, supervision cannot be affective," he commented. Aside from the independent commission, the former election chief urged opposition parties to start training enough members to detect irregularities, fraud and misconduct to cover an estimated 6,000 or more polling stations. Transparency, he argued, was the single most important factor in ensuring that the electoral process remained credible and acceptable to parties from across the political spectrum. "I believe that the government is already doing a lot of preparation for the elections, and it is important for the other political parties to know what has been done and to give their approval," he said. "It is very easy to raise suspicions among the political parties concerned..." Dos Santos, who has monitored elections on behalf of the UN in far-flung places such as Bangladesh, Vukovar and Lesotho, defends some controversial ideas in his book. He supports the idea of delaying a new constitution until after the polls, and holding separate legislative and presidential ballots - a possibility raised by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, but which has so far failed to find favour with opposition groups, who suspect it is a ruse to ensure his re-election. "We gain in that, by having legislative elections first, we will have a new elected parliament that would be in a more legitimate position to approve a new constitution, including the future powers of the executive and the election of its main organ, the president," he said. "This is what I always considered good sense, provided, of course, it is not [used as a] pretext to postpone the ... elections." Now practicing law in Portugal, Dos Santos hopes his 300-page book will show how to avoid past mistakes. "We need to know exactly what was done not so well in the past, to try to have ideas about what we can change to make things work better. This is the purpose of the book," he said.