Angola Steps Toward a Stronger Party and Political Discord
The party unanimously confirmed dos Santos as its
president
during the MPLA-PT's First Extraordinary Party Congress
held in
December 1980. The congress also increased the number of
Central
Committee members from fifty-eight to seventy, and it took
a
decisive step toward creating a greater role for the party
in
running the nation and a diminished role for the
government. A
major constitutional change that had been enacted earlier
paved the
way for the formation of the national People's Assembly.
Provincial
assemblies, elected by the public, then elected assembly
members,
who in turn elected a twenty-five-member permanent
commission that
included the president and the entire Political Bureau.
Thus, the
People's Assembly, which replaced the government's Council
of the
Revolution, became an organ primarily of the party rather
than the
government.
During a meeting in March 1981, the Central Committee
further
reinforced the MPLA-PT's primacy over the government by
assigning
to itself increased responsibility for the job of
orienting and
supervising the work of the Council of Ministers. A
government
reorganization followed the meeting, and several ministers
left the
government to take on senior party positions, where they
had
greater opportunities to gain power. Because most of the
ministers
who remained in the Council of Ministers were technocrats,
the
bureaucratic skills of government officials improved, and
the
reorganization further differentiated government and party
functions.
Dos Santos's efforts to secure the supremacy of the
party over
the government, however, created sharp divisions within
the
government and party elites along political and racial
lines. On
one side were the Africanists, or nationalists, who were
mostly
black and held most of the senior positions in the
government and
ministries. The Africanists, for the most part, were known
as
pragmatists and favored improved relations with the West
and a
rapprochement with UNITA. On the other side were the
ideologues,
mostly mestiços and whites, who dominated the party
and
adhered adamantly to the Soviet Marxist-Leninist line.
Although
these divisions caused bitter schisms and numerous
policy-making
problems, they were not unusual for a government that
dealt with
both the Soviet Unionm and its Allies (in the military
sphere) and
the West (in the economic sphere).
Data as of February 1989
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