Africa-Press – Angola. 45 years ago, on a day like today, José Eduardo dos Santos took office as the second President of Angola, replacing Agostinho Neto, who died 11 days earlier in Moscow, victim of illness.
José Eduardo dos Santos was elected president of the MPLA on 20 September 1979 and invested by Lúcio Lara, the following day, in the positions of President of the People’s Republic of Angola and commander-in-chief of the People’s Armed Forces for the Liberation of Angola (FAPLA).
On 11 March 2016, he announced that he would be retiring from politics in 2018, the year he would have turned 76, in a speech addressed to the ruling party’s top body. Shortly after the General Elections of August 2017, won by the then MPLA candidate João Lourenço, José Eduardo dos Santos handed over the baton on 26 September.
José Eduardo dos Santos led Angola under difficult conditions of instability and war, witnessed the events that marked the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Cold War, which in turn determined a world order marked by the embrace of democracy, market economy, promotion of freedoms, rights and fundamental guarantees of citizens.
Agostinho Neto’s successor signed the Bicesse Agreements on 31 May 1991 with Jonas Savimbi, a process that brought an end to the fratricidal war that Angola experienced between 1975 and 1991, paving the way for the transition that would lead to the General Elections of September 1992, the results of which pointed to a second round of the presidential elections that never took place, due to the refusal of the then leader of UNITA.
In the legislative elections scheduled for 2012, José Eduardo dos Santos, assuming the position of head of the list of candidates for the MPLA, won the elections with 71% of the votes and took office for a five-year term.
According to the Wikileaks website, José Eduardo dos Santos was elected “Man of the Year 2014” by the magazine “Africa World”, justifying that the choice of the Angolan leader was due to his contribution to the excellent process of economic and democratic recovery of Angola and the end of the war.
José Eduardo dos Santos passed away on July 8, 2022, in Spain, at the age of 79, after a long illness.
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