Dos Santos keeps succession open

Lisbon - Long-serving Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos is keeping his country and the world guessing about whether he will bid for re-election in 2012 in Africa's No. 2 oil producer.

Apparently unfazed by unprecedented youth protests against his rule last year inspired by the Arab Spring uprisings, the soft-spoken 69-year-old leader has promised that elections due in September will be transparent and fair, while keeping his own options open.

Dos Santos' mild, inscrutable public demeanour belies his more than 32 years firmly at Angola's helm, a rule eclipsed in Africa only by Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Speculation over Dos Santos' intentions - under the country's new 2010 constitution he could remain in power until 2022 - has reached fever pitch among analysts, investors and oil companies watching one of Africa's fastest-growing economies.

?Dos Santos' succession is the single biggest question hanging over Angola,? said Alex Vines, an Angola expert and analyst with UK-based think-tank Chatham House.

Fanning the succession debate, in September the Angolan weekly Novo Jornal cited sources in the ruling MPLA party to report that Dos Santos had selected Manuel Vicente, the 55-year-old head of state oil company Sonangol, as his successor to take over before or after the election.

But in December, Dos Santos himself appeared to quash this report by re-appointing Vicente for another term as Sonangol CEO, leading observers to conclude he may have had second thoughts about the succession plan, possibly swayed by resistance from within the MPLA.

?The handover of power to a career oil executive has the potential to anger loyalists in the upper ranks of the MPLA, many of whom have been patiently waiting in the wings to take another step up the ladder,? analysts at IHS Global Insight said in a recent research note.

Adding to the speculation, Dos Santos, a Moscow-trained oil engineer, signalled in November his apparent readiness to lead the party in a re-election bid by saying he was ?as a long-serving party militant ... always available? for any mission the MPLA chose for him.

Angola's new constitution approved in 2010 abolished direct presidential elections, strengthening the role of the president in the country's government, politics and military. It established that the person heading the electoral list of the winning party in parliamentary elections becomes president.

?Dos Santos has never been elected president - in 1992 the second round (of presidential elections) never took place, the 2008 election was only for parliament and he postponed the presidential ballot before abolishing it altogether in 2010,? Chatham House's Vines said.

?As matter of legitimacy, and even legacy, he will want to be elected president before retiring,? Vines believed. - Reuters

Source: http://www.iol.co.za/dos-santos-keeps-succession-open-1.1206927

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