President who dominated Angola for many years dies — RT World Information
Former Angolan president Jose Eduardo dos Santos, who led the African nation for 38 years, died aged 79 in Barcelona’s Teknon clinic on Friday after a prolonged sickness, his nation’s authorities has confirmed.
Present Angolan President Joao Lourenco, who served as protection minister beneath dos Santos, has declared 5 days of nationwide mourning, calling his predecessor, who stepped down in 2017, a “distinctive determine of the Angolan homeland, to which he devoted himself from a really early age.”
Dos Santos thought-about himself to be an “unintended president,” having assumed energy after Angola’s first impartial chief Agostinho Neto died throughout surgical procedure. He presided over a interval of dramatic change within the nation’s fortunes. After profitable a grueling civil conflict that lasted almost three a long time towards US-backed insurgents in 2002, he oversaw an oil growth that expanded the dimensions of the nation’s financial system by greater than tenfold.
Nevertheless, regardless of the supposedly Marxist ideas initially held by his MPLA (Widespread Motion for the Liberation of Angola) celebration and the nation’s newer financial prosperity, the vast majority of the inhabitants was reportedly nonetheless residing on beneath $2 per day when dos Santos stepped down after 38 years as chief forward of the 2017 election.
Lourenco, regardless of having labored in dos Santos’ administration, quickly turned on his benefactor’s household with a large anti-corruption marketing campaign that focused each his daughter Isabel, who ran state oil firm Sonangol, and his son Jose Filomeno, who ran the nation’s sovereign wealth fund. Isabel was dismissed from her place and accused of embezzlement, cash laundering and different crimes, fleeing to Dubai to keep away from prosecution. The youthful Jose was not so fortunate, receiving a five-year jail sentence for alleged monetary crimes, although he stays free on attraction.
Dos Santos had been residing in Spain since 2019, the place he had been receiving medical therapy for the sickness that’s believed to have in the end killed him. He was admitted to intensive care on Thursday. The previous chief leaves behind his spouse Ana Paula de Lemos and his six kids, who along with Isabel and Jose Filomeno embrace Tchize, Jose Eduardo Paulino, Danilo Lemos, and Josefina Lemos dos Santos.
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