Angola fixes August 31 as general election date

Angola will hold general elections on August 31, only the third since independence in 1975, an official announcement said Wednesday. “The Council of the Republic has pronounced in favour of August 31, 2012 as the date of general elections,” the consultative body in the president’s office said in a statement. The head of the winning party will become president according to law. The polls are expected to hand another term to incumbent President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, Africa’s second-longest ruling leader at 33 years in power this year. The country’s first election in 1992 was never completed because a bitter civil war re-ignited, and the second was held in 2008, six years after the end of the conflict. The ruling MPLA won the last vote by over 81 percent and has used its commanding parliamentary majority to pass a raft of new laws including a new constitution, which has abolished direct presidential elections.