"In the 2017 elections, out of the country's 164 municipalities, the MPLA won 156, is that to be afraid? The MPLA is a consensus party, it is a machine that works, it prepares very well, it is not afraid," said Américo Kuononoca, president of the MPLA's parliamentary group, when questioned by Lusa.
According to the MPLA's parliamentary leader (in power since 1975), "it is a false expectation" to think that his party is afraid of the local elections because "it is the MPLA that is most interested in these elections".
"There is no other party more interested in holding local elections which are an electoral promise. Do we promise to hold local elections in this term of office in such a way that the MPLA is afraid? On the contrary", he noted.
Américo Kuononoca, who was speaking in Luanda at the end of the parliamentary leaders' conference that scheduled the first ordinary plenary meeting of 2020 for 23 January, pointed that "there is still plenty of time to work on the municipal process".
The organic laws on Municipal Elections and the Organisation and Functioning of Local Authorities and the Law on Administrative Guardianship of Local Authorities are, so far, the three pieces of legislation already approved by the parliament of the 10 that make up the municipal legislative package.
The local elections are scheduled for 2020 and, in the discussions, the government advocates gradualism in the process, while the opposition wants municipalities in the country's 164 municipalities simultaneously.
For the president of the parliamentary group of the National Union for Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the largest opposition party, Liberty Chiyaka, the municipalities "are a commitment of the state that must be made", noting that "there is time and political will for the people to fix".
"Regardless of the interests of groups and parties, there is a national interest to safeguard, the defence of democracy and the realisation of the dignity of the person. I think that there is this openness, the working environment and by feeling today there is this will", he said.
For his part, Alexandre Sebastião André, parliamentary leader of Convergência Ampla de Salvação de Angola - Coligação Eleitoral (CASA-CE), expresses the belief that the local elections will take place in 2020, because the country "needs a real and not just nominal democracy".
Benedito Daniel, president and deputy of the Social Renewal Party (PRS), said his party is already working towards the country's first local elections because it is "a settled point" that they will take place in 2020.
"At no point were the local elections cancelled," he said.
