"The new ambassador in Luanda has already been appointed by decree of the President of the Republic," said the spokeswoman, adding that "normal transfer and installation procedures are now followed", so "these procedures are expected to be concluded by spring.
The resignation of Pedro Pessoa e Costa from the post of ambassador to Panama and the placement in Angola was published in the Diário da República on December 30, but his name had already been on the air since last summer.
In September, the portuguese Minister of Foreign Affairs, Augusto Santos Silva, announced the change in several embassies, confirming that Luanda and Praia would be two of the capitals where the portuguese diplomatic representation would change.
"In Angola, because the current ambassador ends his mandate and will be placed in another equally important country, in Cape Verde, the same happens and in other countries too," Santos Silva said then, without specifying.
Confronted then with the names of the diplomats Pedro Pessoa e Costa, Portugal's first ambassador to Panama, as a possible next incumbent in Angola, and the consul general in Paris, António Albuquerque Moniz, to take on the diplomatic mission in Cape Verde, Santos Silva recalled that the appointment of ambassadors is a competence of the President of the Republic, upon proposal of the government.
"I cannot confirm this information for reasons of institutional respect. The process is ongoing, I was in Angola and was pleased to see that the Angolan authorities had given the 'agrément' that we asked for very quickly," he said.
"The President of the Republic is the one who appoints the ambassadors and it is the President of the Republic who, at the end of a relatively lengthy process, publishes the decree. Always, as a rule, the proposal that is presented [...] is the one that the President of the Republic is in a position to approve," the minister added in statements to journalists in September.
