LUANDA (Reuters) - Defectors from Angola's ruling MPLA party announced plans on Wednesday to form a new political group, saying they aimed to tap into discontent over poverty and corruption.
The group called the Democratic Block is small in number and has almost no chance of taking over power, but its leaders are hoping to grab enough seats in parliament in elections in 2012 to make the ruling MPLA more accountable.
"We want to change the political landscape by making people aware that they can speak out against corruption and vote for a party that protects their civil rights," Filomeno Vieira Lopes, secretary general of the Democratic Block party, told Reuters.
Lopes and other former MPLA members founded the Front for Democracy party in the run up to the 2008 elections, but dissolved it after failing to secure enough votes to elect a single representatives to parliament.
Angola is ranked in the bottom 19 of 180 countries in a Transparency International corruption table last year, despite calls by President Jose Eduardo dos Santos, one of Africa's longest serving leaders, to fight graft.
Foreign investors are tapping Angola's vast oil deposits, but an estimated two-thirds of Angolans still live on less than $2 a day, and opponents of the government say oil wealth has been squandered or stolen.
The Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), has ruled the nation since independence from Portugal in 1975. Its victory in a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002 left political rivals in ruins. The biggest opposition party, UNITA, holds just over 10 percent of the seats in parliament.
"We want to make Angolans aware that the government is here to serve them and not the other way around," said Lopes.
