"We think that there is no political persecution and no selective justice, because practice shows every day that we are fighting various hotbeds of corruption, not only at the top of the pyramid, but also at the bottom," said Luisa Damião Santos.
The leader of the ruling party was speaking in the city of Praia, after a meeting with the president of the African Party of Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV), Janira Hopffer Almada, a party of the same political family, which is holding its XVI ordinary Congress at the weekend.
To support the idea that there is no political persecution or selective justice in the country, the vice-president of MPLA recalled that some administrators who are being accused of embezzlement were arrested days ago.
"It is clear proof that justice is doing its job and there is no selective justice as one would have us believe," she said.
Luísa Damião Santos said that the MPLA, led by President João Lourenço, took the fight against corruption as its flagship, and asked for the collaboration of society, families, schools and churches, "in order to moralise the whole society against bad practices".
"This is a clear proof that our programme is being put into action. In Angola we have the legislative power, the executive power and the judicial power, in the scope of the separation of powers, and the judicial power is doing its role in the scope of the fight against corruption, and this process fits precisely in this sense", underlined the vice-president of MPLA.
Asked about an alleged malaise within the party over this case, the vice-president rejected this idea, reaffirming that the anti-corruption programme was approved by the party itself, because she realised that there were evils to be combated.
"Moreover, the motto of our party at the moment is to improve what is right and to correct what is wrong and corruption is one of the mistakes that we want to correct. Only a party like the MPLA is capable of introspection and realizing that we have made some mistakes, which must be fought. Therefore, there should not be this malaise because this program was suffocated by the MPLA militants themselves," he said.
Besides corruption, Luísa Damião Santos also pointed out impunity and nepotism as other bad practices that should be banished from Angola.
