The coordinators of the United Patriotic Front (FPU) Adalberto Costa Júnior, president of UNITA, and Filomeno Vieira Lopes, president of the Democratic Bloc (BD), as well as Francisco Viana, member of civil society and deputy elected on UNITA lists, joined to Chivukuvuku, also a leader of the FPU, at the first ordinary meeting of the provisional steering committee of PRA-JA Servir Angola, which took place in Viana (Luanda).
Municipal elections, national security law, democratic setback and criticism of the excessive concentration of powers in the President of the Republic were the main thrust of the party leaders' speech.
Filomeno Vieira Lopes, president of BD, one of the parties that forms part of this informal coalition, considered that Angola has a "more sophisticated regime than a simple dictatorship" and "full of skills" to deceive people and make them believe that it is of an open and free regime.
For the BD leader, under current conditions, "political alternation is not possible because it is an autocratic regime, where all institutions are captured by the system", including the electoral bodies.
"They want to make us the folklore of democracy, that we work just to [us] always remain in the opposition", he criticized, arguing that the 2022 elections were won by the opposition, with the regime reacting with the militarization of the country.
"We are in a state where institutions are captured and opposition parties only serve to tell the world that there is democracy", pointed out the politician and teacher, accusing the regime led by the MPLA, party in power since 1975, of preventing alternation and wanting to keep their political opponents in opposition forever.
Filomeno Vieira Lopes also criticized the national security law, approved in general and which will be discussed in the specialty, "which protects the party in power and the President of the Republic (PR)", and addressed the issue of local authorities, a "decentralization policy, of which the regime is afraid", because it is a factor in the democratization of the country.
Adalberto Costa Júnior also fiercely criticized the excessive powers of the PR, which "runs everything", highlighting that none of the opposition leaders has been invited to speak on public television since 2018.
"Only Filomeno was invited to speak, as an expert in economics, they were distracted. (...) This is a beautiful democracy", he joked, stressing that the regime is trying to pass anti-democratic laws to ensure its political survival.
Among these is the national security law, which UNITA wants to purge of the most critical points in the discussion in the specialty, such as Internet control.
The president of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) defended the revision of the Constitution for direct election of the PR and creation of the electoral court and insisted that the issue of a third term for João Lourenço is "non-negotiable", not having the support of your party.
Costa Júnior assured that the commitment to the FPU is to "maintain and continue", with the platform in a process of consolidation and its members have "a common vision of an Angola that belongs to everyone, and not to the excluded, as the regime does".
The leader of PRA JA Servir Angola, Abel Chivukuvuku, regretted that the party does not yet have a legal status, due to the regime's blockades, but guaranteed that this impediment strategy "will not work".
For Chivukuvuku, the balance of Angola's 50 years of independence, which will be completed next year, "is negative for the majority of the population and was only valid for some who have properties and bank accounts in Europe, Asia and the Americas and take holidays in Dubai, Rio de Janeiro and other places like the Seychelles", in an allusion to João Lourenço's Christmas vacation.
Like his partners, he criticized authoritarianism and "hyperbolic powers of the head of state, who controls all segments of public life", and called for local elections to be held.
Francisco Viana, representing civil society, said that the people "can't last until 2027" and asked for local authorities now.
"It has to be now, the time has come to increase pressure and fight for our rights", appealed the businessman, criticizing the autocratic regime, which "runs away from local authorities like the devil runs away from the cross", and the "aberrant Constitution that gives the holder of executive power too many powers".
