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Angolan Leader Decides to Not Seek Reelection
President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who has led Angola since 1979, said Thursday he would not run in presidential elections planned for next year.
Dos Santos, 58, made the announcement following a meeting late Wednesday of the central committee of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, known by its Portuguese initials MPLA.
It was not immediately clear why he decided against running for re-election, or how the move would affect the almost continuous civil war that has raged since Angola gained independence from Portugal in 1975.
The fighting has claimed more than 500,000 lives and left its once-prosperous economy in shambles.
Dos Santos is a former guerrilla fighter who rose from obscurity to rule oil-rich Angola during more than two decades of civil war and turned the country into a major regional power broker.
A bricklayer's son from Luanda, Dos Santos began his political life with boots and a rifle in 1961 as an 18-year-old guerrilla for the Soviet-inspired Marxist party MPLA in the fight for independence.
After serving as foreign minister, he was elected president in 1979, at the age of 37, upon the death of Agostinho Neto, Angola's first president.
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