Angolan opposition founding member switches sides Tue 19 Aug 2008, 15:15 GMT
[-] Text [+] By Henrique Almeida
LOBITO (Reuters) - A founding member of Angola's main opposition UNITA party switched sides on Tuesday and asked voters to support the ruling MPLA party in the country's first post-civil war parliamentary elections next month.
Jorge Valentim, who fought for UNITA against the MPLA-run government in a brutal 27-year civil war that ended in 2002, told journalists the MPLA was now the only party able to secure long-sought liberty and peace for the Angolan people.
"Trust me when I ask you to give the MPLA party and its president an unprecedented majority so that he (Jose Eduardo dos Santos) can continue to lead the people towards peace, reconciliation and progress ..." he said.
Valentim also urged Angolans to vote for dos Santos in the presidential elections expected to take place next year.
Dos Santos, in power for 29 years, has not announced whether he will run for president.
Valentim has been at odds with UNITA ever since he led a dissident "renewal" faction of the then UNITA rebel movement in 1997 and called on UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi -- killed by government troops in 2002 -- to abandon his guerrilla struggle.
Valentim's decision to back the MPLA and the president before landmark parliamentary elections on September 5 could hurt the already beleaguered UNITA's popularity.
He was Tourism Minister for UNITA in the 1997 Government of National Unity and Reconciliation, but he and four other UNITA members were expelled from the party in 2006 after being accused of voting in favour of MPLA initiatives.
A UNITA spokesman said he was not surprised by Valentim's comments. "We knew that would happen. We expelled Valentim from our party in 2006 and his decision to back the MPLA only proves that we were right," Alcides Sakala told Reuters.
The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), in power since Angola's independence from Portugal in 1975, is widely expected to retain its 129 out of 220 seats in parliament against a divided and underfunded opposition.
A total of 5,198 candidates will vie for seats in a country that rivals Nigeria as Africa's biggest oil producer, but where two-thirds of the population live on less than $2 a day.
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