For the specialist in African politics and author of the book "Angola, Magnificent and Miserable", the president and leader of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) "continues to have around him people very involved in the pre-2017 looting" (height in which he replaced the previous president, José Eduardo dos Santos), weakening the fight against corruption.
"João Lourenço has not gained much popularity in his fight against corruption. People are aware that what is at stake is more a personal, or political, revenge than a structural cleansing", he stressed, in an allusion to the legal proceedings against family members of the ex-president, in particular his daughter, Isabel dos Santos.
"There is a concentration of the harshest sanctions against the family of the ex-president", continued the researcher, adding that although the fight against corruption in Angola mainly targets people associated with the previous regime, not all are being disturbed.
"The judicial domain in Angola is not entirely independent of political power and the generalized appreciation is that it is a political struggle, considers the researcher, arguing that João Lourenço did not reap much fruit from the international" offensive "against Isabel dos Santos, after the "Luanda Leaks" scandal.
Public mistrust of the true objectives of João's anti-corruption struggle deepened throughout 2020, overshadowing even some of the president's merit, which brought the topic, which until 2017 was taboo, to the center of political life.
On the other hand, João Lourenço, when converging with the critics who, historically, attributed corruption to a fundamental role in the MPLA's path, compromises the party itself.
"It is a stick with two beaks, it shows maturity and lucidity on the part of the President when confronting this legacy of corruption, but it also puts him in a difficult situation because the party responsible for this bad governance and the disappointing results of the golden age in which Angola received extraordinary oil revenues is the same party that is in power, they are the same people ", points out the academic and professor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford.
On the other hand, the President has not been able to reverse the dynamics of economic decline and faces external issues such as the covid-19 pandemic.
Even so, the MPLA, a kind of party-state "is in a very favorable position to deal with any electoral challenge", admits Ricardo Soares de Oliveira, considering that the opposition may not have the capacity, or the means, to threaten this domain .
"But there is no doubt that the [MPLA] party is going to these elections more fragile than at any time since 1992", when the first multi-party elections were held in Angola.
On the role that young people, who have taken the lead in challenging the government, may have, Ricardo Soares de Oliveira noted that the MPLA is also trying to modernize itself to "speak" different languages, with different age and social groups.
"There is no doubt that much of the party's software focuses on realities from the Angolan past that today have a very limited relevance for the large mass of the Angolan population whose concerns are related to the present," commented the academic.
"The extent to which the MPLA, in the absence of positive economic dynamics in the past four years, will be able to speak promisingly to these sections of the population is a political issue that is certainly worrying for the party," he continued.
Ricardo Soares de Oliveira also questions the extent to which youth, highly frustrated and with very limited life prospects, can have a political materialization that is consistently mobilized for a political project.
"Today, neither the opposition nor the activists appear to be able to mobilize this mythical entity, youth," he suggested.
