Angola: Irregularities Marred Historic Elections via Human Rights Watch News Releases
No Independent Oversight, Media Bias
Angola’s parliamentary elections on September 5, 2008, reportedly won by the ruling MPLA party, were marred by numerous irregularities, Human Rights Watch said today. Preliminary results indicate that the MPLA won more than 80 percent of the vote, the first held in Angola since 1992.
Key problems identified by Human Rights Watch include obstruction by the National Electoral Commission (CNE) of accreditation for national electoral observers, its failure to respond to media bias in favor of the ruling party, and severe delays by the Angolan government in providing funds to opposition parties. The evidence obtained by Human Rights Watch on these three key issues – observers, media bias, and state funding – suggests the polls did not meet the...
from the Globe and Mailby STEPHANIE NOLENLUANDA — For sale in a mediocre neighbourhood of Luanda: pokey two-bedroom apartment in a Soviet-style 1960s apartment block. Fourteenth floor, elevator last operated in 1990. Erratic plumbing, no maintenance in the past 22 years. Asking $300,000 (U.S.) And that's about all you're going to get in Luanda for $300,000: Any new one-bedroom apartment in this city starts at $1-million.Luanda recently snatched the title of "most expensive" away from better-known capitals such as London, Oslo and Tokyo, according to a number of international surveys. The tide of petrodollars surging into the once sleepy port has created a property boom like no other.Office space in the centre of the congested city sells for about $8,000 a square metre. A... 
from the Cabinet Press A great story about a woman's mission trip to Angola. A church in New Hampshire helped to arrange the trip. - KaleBy ELIZABETH ROTCH“How was your trip?”We went to Africa. Of course people want to know about it. By now I should have prepared a ready answer, but I have not.I try to respond: It was eye-opening, heart-rending, exciting, humbling … awesome! But the words seem so inadequate.Six members of the Church of Our Saviour, Milford — Martha Manley, Frank Manley, Dawn Formica, Richard Formica, and the Rev. Chip Robinson, and I, accompanied by Susan Lassen of Portsmouth, director of NetsforLife — were on a mission. A mission to see and learn more about our companion parish, St. Andrew’s Anglican Church in Ondjiva, Angola.We have been working toward this... 
from All AfricaAngola Press Agency (Luanda)The Ministry of Assistance and Social Welfare (MINARS) has an Operative Plan that shall be part of the 2009/2012 quadrennial programme, with a series of activities that make up the country's reality, announced this Thursday here the incumbent minister, João Baptista Kussumua.The official announced this at a meeting, held at the Palace of Congresses, with the Parliamentary Women's Caucus, led by MP Cesaltina da Conceição Major, which aimed at straightening the cooperation between both institutions.Minister Kussumua stressed that the plan results from a series of actions and tasks that shall balance socially the efficient mechanism to assist the disadvantaged population.In this framework, he said, the Welfare Ministry will also, as part of the... 
from The Times South AfricaLUANDA - Angola’s deputy prime minister has lashed out at Irish rock star turned political activist Bob Geldof over his claims that the southern African nation is run by criminals, state radio reported yesterday.Aguinaldo Jaime said Geldof’s comments, made at a sustainable development conference held in Lisbon on Tuesday, were "unfortunate and disrespectful."Geldof, the organiser of the mammoth Live Aid and Live 8 concerts who was knighted for his efforts to fight poverty, told the conference that Angola was a country "run by criminals."He slammed the oil-rich, yet poverty-stricken southern African nation for building houses in the Bay of Luanda that were more luxurious than those in the exclusive Chelsea and Park Lane neighbourhoods of London."He showed... 
fro the Journal Sentinel OnlineConsultant builds African client baseBy RICK ROMELLIt's one of those things that started with college students talking earnestly over coffee.They were in Iowa, but their interest was the Third World and how best to help develop it economically. Someday, they said, they'd go into business together and do just that.That was nearly 20 years ago, but the ocean-spanning friendships those conversations forged explain how a key piece of the development efforts of the African nation of Angola came to be handled from a small suite of offices in the YWCA building on N. King Drive.Those would be the offices of Pinnacle XL Inc., an eight-employee management consulting firm that, improbably, draws about half its sales from Angola, a country that for decades was crippled... 
from All AfricaAngola Press Agency (Luanda)NEWS14 April 2008Posted to the web 15 April 2008LuandaAngolan Parliament speaker, Roberto de Almeida, Monday in Cape Town, South Africa, called on world's politicians and civil society to mobilize efforts and speed up the progress of development, in order to rollback poverty in line with the millennium's goals.Addressing the plenary session of the 118 Inter-parliamentary Union (IPU)) conference taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, Roberto de Almeida said that another indispensable condition to rollback poverty is the fulfilment of the pact established in 2002, in Monterrey, providing for a new global partnership between the developed and underdeveloped nations."This partnership should be centred, mainly, on national development strategies and... 
from All AfricaInter Press Service (Johannesburg)By Mario De QueirozLisbonThere is little awareness on the problem of trafficking in persons, mainly women and children, in Angola, and no laws for cracking down on the growing phenomenon.Paulino Cunha da Silva, head of cooperation and exchange in the Angolan Interior Ministry, admitted at a workshop held in Luanda Tuesday and Wednesday that the country lacks laws to fight trafficking in human beings.The workshop was sponsored by the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).Cunha da Silva recognised that Angola needs to update its legislation and improve its operational actions to get results in the struggle against trafficking of persons, which affects nearly all African states."This workshop has also shown that there is still much to...