Rights group casts doubt over Angola vote credibility

An international rights group has expressed concerns over the credibility of Angola's upcoming August 31 vote even as the country's main opposition party threatened to demonstrate if it did not receive guarantees that the ballot would be fair.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) Wednesday said that the Angola government had made sure that the vote would not be fair.

Key concerns that could be a threat to peaceful and fair polls were yet to be addressed, HRW Africa director Daniel Bekele said.

"...[These] include the lack of impartiality of the National Election Commission, restrictions on the media, a climate of repression in Angola’s interior provinces, and increasing political violence and intimidation in the capital, Luanda," Mr Bekele said.

In a report titled “SADC: Press Angola, Zimbabwe on Rights as Elections Near”, the watchdog urges Southern African Development Community (SADC) bloc leaders to press both governments to improve human rights conditions ahead of their planned elections.

SADC’s annual heads of state summit is scheduled for August 17 and 18 in Maputo, Mozambique.

"Although Angola’s 2010 constitution guarantees the rights to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly, and freedom of the media, the government has increasingly limited the exercise of these rights”, HRW added.

Main opposition party Unita has also accused the national electoral commission of padding the voters list.

The commission, which denies this, has postponed a planned meeting with the party until Friday.

"We do not know the reason why the meeting has been postponed but are going to make our position on the electoral process known on Thursday," Voice of America Radio quoted the party’s spokesperson Alcides Sakala as saying.

Unita president Isaias Samakuva and CNE boss Andre da Silva Neto are also scheduled to meet but the date remained unclear.

President Jose Eduardo dos Santos' ruling MPLA is expected to handily win the election. He has been in power since 1979.