Angola to hold general elections on August 24

Angola will hold general elections on August 24. 

President João Lourenço announced the date before the Council of the Republic, a consultative body that met on Friday to vote on the head of state's proposal.

Even before the date of the ballot was revealed, electioneering had long gotten underway.

But the leader of the opposition UNITA party, Adalberto da Costa Júnior, decried what he called the unequal treatment accorded to political parties. 

"The competitors in an electoral challenge do not have differentiated valences. The law puts them all in the same circumstances, so says our constitution, so say the laws. But as any serious and honest citizen evaluates, we are in a process of electoral approximation absolutely violating the laws," he said. 

An accusation that Rui Falcão Pinto de Andrade refutes. The member of the ruling party's political bureau told Africanews that "the MPLA has shown organizational capacity", while "the opposition sees phenomena that do not exist".

João Lourenço was elected on August 23, 2017, and is seeking a second term. It will be the fifth time that Angolans go to the polls since 1992.