Orange

LUANDA (AFP)

Angola’s parliament was set to approve the country’s constitution next week, state media reported Wednesday, in a move which should end confusion over the long-delayed presidential election.

“On the day of January 21, the constitution will be approved,” state-owned national radio said.

Critics quickly accused the government of trying to stifle public debate by holding the parliamentary vote while Angola is hosting the Africa Cup of Nations, the continent’s premier football event, marred by a guerilla attack that killed two of Togo’s squad.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos has been in power for 30 years, but has only faced an election once, in abortive 1992 polls that triggered a new phase in Angola’s civil war.

Angola held parliamentary elections in 2008, six years after the end of its nearly three-decade civil war. A presidential poll was expected last year, but was put on hold to allow preparation of the constitution.

A committee on Tuesday approved a draft constitution put forward by Dos Santos’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), has an 81 percent majority as it does in parliament.

Under that charter, the president would be chosen through a party list system, meaning Dos Santos would not have to face a direct popular vote.

The proposed system would also replace the position of prime minister with a vice president, in order to give more power to the president, who heads the government and the armed forces.

Members of parliament are due to vote on the proposals next week, instead of March as originally expected.

“The government is taking advantage of the Cup of Nations to sneak this through without any proper debate,” Alcides Sakala, spokesman for the main opposition party UNITA (Union for the Total Independence of Angola), told AFP.

UNITA has been highly critical of the reform process and the indirect election idea, which Dos Santos suggested himself during a public press conference.

“This means it could be 2012 before we have any election, because that is when the parliamentary period finishes and it means the president will be merely co-opted, rather than truly elected by the people,” Sakala said.

“It’s a total subversion of democracy,” he added.

Angolan journalist and activist Rafael Marques said the government hoped to mute criticism of the charter by holding the vote during the football tournament.

“Because of the football and what happened in Togo, the international community will not be paying attention to what is happening and the vote will be passed and the new constitution made law. This is a deliberate strategy,” he said.

Dos Santos took over from Angola’s first president Agostinho Neto in 1979. Civil society campaigners accuse him of clinging to power and manipulating the constitutional process, something the party has denied.