Government committed to elections despite security concerns

The Angolan government is to press ahead with elections next year despite the country’s on-going civil war, Foreign Affairs Vice-Minister George Chicoti told IRIN on Thursday. “We will hold parliamentary and probably presidential elections next year, whatever the situation on the ground is,” Chicoti said.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum Southern Africa Summit in the South African coastal city of Durban, Chicoti noted that the government was consolidating its hold on areas that it controls in order to prepare for the election at some point in 2002. “Of course where there is no security there will be no vote, but we feel that we can guarantee a representative poll,” Chicoti said.

However, the church and civil society groups in Angola have criticised elections under such circumstances, saying that until there is peace, an election in which only a proportion of Angolans could take part would be a waste of time. They also point out that without a national census and a guarantee of the free movement of people, it would be unconstitutional.

“Elections are just an instrument to consolidate peace, not to bring peace itself. Choosing leadership is not a condition for living together. Living together with a shared vision is a condition for choosing leadership.
That is the tension right now and we have to face it, and that is the position the church has taken,” executive secretary of the Inter-Ecclesial Committee for Peace in Angola (COIEPA), Daniel Ntoni-Nzinga, told IRIN. He also stressed that Angola’s first and only multiparty polls in 1992 did not bring peace, instead the country was plunged back into war when UNITA disputed the results.

The government’s control of Angola is limited to an Atlantic ocean coastal belt, and towns in the interior. Much of the rest of the countryside is a depopulated and insecure no-man’s land. And, with the defeat of UNITA’s conventional military capability in 1999, the rebel movement has rebounded as a mobile guerrilla force that in the course of this year has pressed closer to key government-held centres.

But Chicoti said the Angolan government viewed the planned elections as a litmus test of support for the ruling MPLA, as well as UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi - even though they acknowledged that under current conditions voting could not take place in rebel-held areas. “Savimbi, if he is the democrat that he claims, must take part in these elections,” Chicoti said.

He also restated the government’s commitment to negotiate with Savimbi, but on the condition that he ceases armed attacks on Angolan civilians and the military, “We’ll talk to him (Savimbi) any time, but he must leave his gun at home and abide by the (1994 Lusaka) accord that he himself and his movement signed up to,” Chicoti said.