The UNITA parliamentary group announced Thursday at a press conference that it will file a motion to impeach Angola’s president, Joao Lourenco, on the grounds that it considers his government has subverted the country’s democratic process and is promoting an authoritarian regime that threatens peace.
For Angola’s main opposition party, the rule of Joao Lourenco, who in September last year began his second term as president, is “against democracy, against social peace and against national independence” and “the nation’s rejection of him translates into the highest failure rate ever recorded.” the ladder.”
According to the UNITA parliamentary group, in the eyes of Angolan citizens, the head of state has fulfilled the oath he made to his constituents only nine months after taking office for a new term, and therefore “must be removed from office.”
“The current President of the Republic has sabotaged the democratic process, as he has consolidated an authoritarian regime in the country, which threatens peace and the fundamental rights of Angolans, that is, there is no pluralism or equality of opportunity and treatment of different currents of opinion. Politics in the public space,” points out the party led by Adalberto Costa Júnior In the “political foundations” of his request for dismissal.
Given that in Angola all power is in fact concentrated in a single number, which means that there is only one “effective force in a republic that increasingly functions like an absolutist”, the Gallo Negro party is advancing towards this political initiative convinced that “such vandalism is a crime Violation of the Constitution seriously undermine the democratic rule of law.”
A country “captured by an oligarchy”
The UNITA deputies affirm that Joao Lourenço, in his capacity as the owner of the executive power, having determined the political orientation of the country, “through which the state has been taken over by the oligarchy directed, maintained and controlled by the President of the Republic,” continues the assault on human dignity, the achievement of national independence and the building of peace society and the unity of the nation.
Although the initiative is doomed to failure, the balance of power that exists in the National Assembly of Angola, where the MPLA (which has ruled the country since independence in 1975 and won elections again in 2022) has an absolute majority of 120 considered the UNITA parliamentary group According to 90 deputies from UNITA and six other opposition parties, Joao Lourenco’s action represented “a flagrant aberration or abuse of his functions”.
In the face of a “serious breach of inherent duties,” the president “destroys, alters, or undermines the constitutionally prescribed rule of law,” allowing, among other things, to “assault” state coffers in order to “finance direct and indirect private sector investments of the oligarchy.” that protect.”
“By promoting partisanship and direct or indirect, open or covert control over state institutions by a political party, the President of the Republic, with gross deviation or abuse of its functions or in serious breach of inherent duties, destroys, alters or subverts the constitutionally established rule of law,” As Unita says.
UNITA also claims that there is “strong evidence of coercion” by the constitutional bodies, namely the National Assembly, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, the National Bank of Angola, and the courts, by “the President of the Republic, which attempts against the orderly functioning of the institutions”.
With regard to the judiciary, he adds, “there is clear evidence of Joao Lourenco’s interference”, such as censorship, exploitation and manipulation of the judges of the higher courts.
According to UNITA, “there has also been an increase” in “evidence of acts of positive and negative corruption” in political positions that depend on the President of the Republic “who, even after receiving numerous denunciations, complaints and allegations, shows laxity and tolerance, “complicity or contempt” in relation to these alleged practices.
In this proposal for the dismissal of Joao Lourenco, UNITA also points out that, with the aforementioned practices, Joao Lourenco built and consolidated a political system based on the subversion of law and the state, on corruption, contrary to his oath. Opening”.
