LUANDA - Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos's ruling MPLA party scored a landslide parliamentary election victory on Wednesday with nearly 82 percent of the vote, provisional final results showed.

The outcome, accepted by the opposition, is widely expected to ensure the oil-rich African country emerges from its first election in 16 years without the turmoil that has marred other polls elsewhere on the continent in the past year.

The MPLA, which has been in power since independence from Portugal in 1975 and has embraced pro-business policies after abandoning Marxism in the early 1990s, crushed a divided and under-funded opposition nationally and in all 18 provinces.

UNITA, a former rebel group which is now the largest opposition party, won just over 10 percent, election officials told reporters. UNITA conceded defeat on Monday, dropping a bid to contest what it had described as a flawed poll.

Delays in opening polling stations and missing voter registration lists led to an unscheduled second day of voting.

International observers have expressed general satisfaction with the conduct of the poll on Friday and Saturday and said they hoped it would lead to the blossoming of a full democracy after a lengthy period of virtual one-party rule.

"We congratulate the people of Angola on their participation in this important step in strengthening their democracy," an election observer mission from the U.S. embassy in Angola said in a statement on Tuesday.

The U.S. team said the poll was generally peaceful, but noted the MPLA ((Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) had an advantage through state control of major media outlets.

The U.S. statement followed a European Union observer team's verdict that Angolans had been able to vote freely. African observer missions also described the poll as legitimate.

BOOMING ECONOMY

Angola rivals Nigeria as sub-Saharan Africa's largest oil producer and is an emerging diamond producer on the continent. Foreign firms have invested billions in Angola's booming oil sector, and the economy grew by 24 percent in 2007.

But the size of the MPLA victory may be a concern for democracy activists and others who accuse Angola of turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights and neglecting millions of its poor citizens.

Two-thirds of Angola's 17 million people live on less than $2 a day.

The MPLA, once an ally of Moscow during the Cold War, currently holds a simple majority in the 220-seat parliament and had campaigned hard for a two-thirds majority, a level that would allow it to alter the constitution.

Dos Santos, who came to power in 1979, has said Angola needs a modern constitution to reinforce democracy and the rule of law but has provided no details. He is widely expected to run in next year's presidential election.

Angola's last presidential election led to a resumption of a 27-year civil war that killed half a million people and destroyed much of the country's infrastructure.

A fragile peace has been in place since the end of the conflict in 2002 when UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) leader Jonas Savimbi was killed.

"It is not so important who wins. What we want is peace," said Ducho Mendes, a 49-year-old construction worker who fled to the capital Luanda during fighting in the 1980s.