LUANDA, Sept. 8 (Xinhua) -- Angolan President Joao Lourenco was elected Saturday president of the ruling MPLA with 98.58 percent of the votes.
The results of the election held during the party's sixth extraordinary congress corresponded to 2,309 votes in favor and 27 against, MPLA electoral commission announced.
The party electoral commission declared the elections held by secret ballot as free, transparent and fair.
The MPLA has been in power in the southern African country since 1975.
Joao Lourenco who has been vice president of the party, replaces Jose Eduardo dos Santos who held the chairmanship of the party for 39 years.
The outgoing MPLA president stressed in his farewell speech that he leaves the presidency of the party with the "conviction of having fulfilled" his role and "ready to pass the testimony of the party leadership to its next president."
Dos Santos assumed that he committed mistakes during his Angola's 40-year rule as president of the country stressing that "there is, of course, no human activity free of mistakes".
Lourenco, in office since Sept. 26, 2017 as Angolan president, inherited a nation marked by ingrained corruption in all sectors of society and a devastated economy aggravated by the fall of the crude oil price in the international market since 2014.
This is considered as an historic moment in the ruling MPLA as for the first time the party's presidency is transferred from an alive president to another.
Jose Eduardo dos Santos took over after the death of the first MPLA and the country's president, Antonio Agostinho Neto who died in September 1979.
