Critics of the ruling MPLA party say the party could seek to politicise the repatriation ahead of Wednesday's election
The body of Angola's former president José Eduardo dos Santos, who died in Spain in July, is offloaded from an aeroplane, at Luanda international airport, in Angola, August 20 2022. Picture: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/REUTERS
Critics of the ruling MPLA party worried that with a tight election due to take place on Wednesday, the party could seek to politicise the repatriation, diverting attention from the main opposition party UNITA’s campaign and from the electoral process. A family member of Angola's former President Jose Eduardo dos Santos carries a picture of him at Luanda international airport, in Angola, August 20 2022. Picture: SIPHIWE SIBEKO/REUTERS
Angola is gearing up for an election that is likely to be the tightest since the first multiparty election there in 1992. The MPLA, which was dos Santos’s party and is that of President Joao Lourenço, has governed Angola since it won independence from Portugal in 1975. “It seems like a very transparent manoeuvre to monopolise the media, as usual,” Jon Schubert, a political anthropologist and Angola expert at the University of Basel, told Reuters, referring to the repatriation of Dos Santos’s body. Most Angolan media is controlled by the state.
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