In a year of much public outcry over President João Lourenço’s actions, the protests are, for Adalberto Júnior, a sign of the crisis that causes “there to be hunger in Luanda”, something that was felt in the rest of the country, but not in the capital, says.
Very critical of the President’s actions, whom he accuses of being conniving with corruption, through the award of large public works without public tender, the leader of UNITA is very caustic in relation to the Constitutional Court that failed to register the party of Abel Chivukuvuku, PRA-JA Servir Angola.
“It’s a real shame”, he says about the attitude of the court, which has been terrible at all levels, showing solidarity with the demonstration that Chivukuvuku scheduled for Saturday, because for ACJ, in Angola one is “living in an authoritarian state , not democratic and that even if there are presidential decrees that limit the right to demonstrate, it is necessary to demonstrate.
About the first year of leadership I expected….
Adalberto Júnior said that apart from covid-19, it was exactly what he was expecting, noting that covid came to bring substantial changes to life while it is serving as an excuse for two fundamental issues, such as the annulment of institutional commitments, everything regards elections, on the one hand, when elections are taking place around the world.
“In Southern Africa, Namibia held elections two weeks ago, with the particularity that the opposition won the majority of the chambers, in Malawi, the opposition also won the elections, so the fear of those in power increased,” he reported.
On the other hand, covid-19 is serving to limit circulation within the country by means of a sanitary fence imposed on all roads to Luanda, since the beginning of the state of emergency, in March 2020 that was never lifted, whose consequences are dramatic in people’s lives, “it kills a lot of people”.
Isn’t that fence justified?
At no level, says Adalberto Júnior, recalling that, at the last meeting of the Council of the Republic, representatives of the social areas criticized Luanda, including businessmen, a fact that he considers to be more of a political argument, more perverse than a defender of life, in addition to emphasizing that around is killing a lot of people.
The President says that there was no postponement of the municipal elections because they had not been scheduled …
For the president of UNITA, it is the clearest expression of the lack of seriousness in conducting the country’s destinations, when João Lourenço says that there was no postponement because the municipalities had never been called, since the municipal elections are not today and the President of the Republic is not a character on the margins of leadership structures, whether from the MPLA party or the Government.
According to Adalberto Júnior, the National Assembly approved a route for the approval of laws and dates for the elections in May 2015, the task plan for holding general and municipal elections and João Lourenço was vice-president of the assembly and knows although there was a calendar commitment that the MPLA did not keep.
“There is a lot of disappointment for those who believed in a man who appeared as a reformer. That’s how he announced his mandate: no one is above the law, fighting corruption should be universal, ”noted ACJ.
On the importance of the realization of municipalities and possible decentralization
Adalberto Júnior said that it is far beyond being a UNITA problem but a national one, and that the country urgently needs revision of the Constitution and reform of the State, as it is not a functional democracy.
In a big interview, the president of UNITA stated that freedom of information is an illusion and the tendency is to establish monopolies under state control that attack the freedom of the press and serve to fight opposition parties.
“They have entire news programs dedicated to destroying the image of the opposition leader and he is not invited. This is a new practice, even with José Eduardo dos Santos we had never seen this exaggeration. Today João Lourenço is showing himself in his true dimension of authoritarianism without limit ”, he denounces.
But does UNITA need municipalities?
It is not just UNITA, it is the country. The Constitution, he stresses, gives the President the status of a god who has exceptional powers, gives himself the luxury of annulling national agendas, does not go to the Assembly to render accounts, having been ruled by the Constitutional Court since the time of José Eduardo dos Santos that remains in force, saying that deputies cannot inspect the government without the authorization of the head of government.
“This is absurd. It means that where there is no oversight, where there is no control, there is no good governance. The autarchies are not a miracle in themselves, but they are the return of part of the power to the people, they bring the government closer to the governed ”, he warned.
ACJ considered that corruption was also encouraged by the inexistence of this proximity and ensured that the municipalities will bring added transparency at all levels, in the management of the State’s affairs.
And the argument that so many municipalities are lacking staff at the same time?
It is a pure lie. Angola now has 164 municipalities, they are not operating under the trees: there are municipal administrations, logistics, facilities, all operating conditions. What is the difference? Today, administrators are appointed by the President of the Republic, they do not have democratic legitimacy.
The MPLA is frightened by the prospect of losing the absolute powers with which it has become accustomed to governing all these years. When we have autarchies, each mayor – even the MPLA elected – will realize that he stops responding to the President and starts responding to whoever elects him: the people.
To what extent does the non-holding of the elections affect the objectives that it had when it took the leadership of the party?
It harms because it postpones the country. It can delay the objective of the strategic goals that I, as a leader, also advocate. What Angola do we have today? We have a country with a very serious economic crisis, in the fifth year of recession, which generated a dramatic social crisis. One dies of hunger in Luanda. We have been starving to death in the country for a long time and today, in the capital, many people are going to eat the garbage collections.
The covid and these postponements bring a political crisis. There is no quality of institutional dialogue. You go to a demonstration and you see the government shooting real bullets at young people. When a decree made at night is used to prevent constitutional rights, it is the demonstration that we are not living in democracy, we are living in dictatorship. And a party that leads the opposition has alternation projects, but cannot live exclusively with alternation, the concern is much wider: how can I have a better country?
How am I going to fight hunger, the rampant poverty that affects 60% to 75% of the population? We have a very publicized sample that the fight against corruption makes law, which is not true. In Angola, those who want to persecute are combated and a number of other large-scale corruption are protected. Public procurement for the past three years is a disaster when it comes to transparency. Billion contracts are being delivered in a simplified way, without competitions.
As an example, Adalberto Júnior said that the Caculo-Cabaça Dam has now been delivered again in a simplified contract to Omatapalo and the other company that belongs to Manuel Vicente.
Is João Lourenço corrupt or conniving with corruption?
“ João Lourenço is conniving, objectively. My evidence is the Diaries of the Republic signed by the President.
Not asking an investigation from your chief of staff, Edeltrudes Costa, who is suspected of receiving $ 17.3 million from a businessman, is an example of collusion?
It is indisputable. So the President of the fight against corruption has as a Minister of State someone accused of corruption?
The information that Manuel Vicente could be under investigation for corruption, with the sign of change?
The President needs to use what he did not want to try to recover some popularity index, or to try to recover some credibility that has been destroyed today. This problem of public procurement is much more serious.
The most strategic element in fostering corruption is public procurement without competitions, this is the bulk of thefts worldwide and it is exactly here that João Lourenço is showing us that he is embracing the incentive to corruption.
” UNITA and the MPLA today are different in everything.
The world today is no longer referring to ideologies at the party level. See that the MPLA itself says that it comes from the bases of scientific socialism and is in the wild capitalism. At UNITA we have principles and values that we maintain. We propose to serve the country and it cannot be just an occasion speech. There is a permanent intention of proximity to the populations and respect for plurality ”, he observed.
UNITA says it has particular referents, enormous social sensitivity, patriotism, the question of angolanity and the way in which it determines internal decisions, I have a president who leads the party, whose leadership is collective, without any doubt that it has to invest deeply in agriculture, as an element of development and support for the majority of the population.
UNITA also claims to have a governance program that led to the last elections and that is being updated, with several subprograms of agricultural development, community support, incentives for cooperatives, creation of schools, community engineering, when Angola continues to look at the oil, speaks of diversification, but then does not implement it.
“We have a look at the stability of communities as an important element for the country. The MPLA has traditional authorities to whom it gives a uniform, a bottle of wine and does what the colonial administration did: it treats them in a subservient way. It instrumentalizes them with party cards and is one of the bases for the serious problems of political intolerance in the communities. UNITA will never go there ”, according to ACJ.
In view of these facts, UNITA states that it has had the courage to assume democracy fully, and that is why the last congress had five candidates, with a disputed public campaign, with all its consequences.
In a country that has institutions that serve the party of power, this is an exhibition, but UNITA says it does not give up this reality.
Therefore, they are substantive differences in beliefs. UNITA goes further. As a party with parliamentary representation it has been entitled to nominate some figures to relevant institutional bodies, namely to the Constitutional Court, and has nominated characters from society, has not nominated militants to prove that, when it is a government, it will not govern with UNITA, will govern with the competent Angolans.
Regarding the role played by the Catholic Church in Angola, ACJ said that it is arguably an institution of the highest relevance in the country, where a substantial part of the population is Catholic and with very relevant aspects of social responsibility.
“In recent times it has appeared with a particularity that may be new, surprising, today we begin to assist many to come to the public with strong interventions of great courage and that tell us that the Church does not want to stay out of this process of challenges, in full democratization, of development and the recovery of values of dignity for all ”, he acknowledged.
Finally, the president of UNITA says that there are bishops who have made very heavy interventions, in defense of life, dignity, values, transparency and come to call names to those who are stealing the country …
