Adalberto Costa Júnior made this statement at the end of a meeting of the political platform Frente Patriótica Unida (FPU), held this Wednesday, in Luanda, which includes the parties National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Democratic Bloc, and Abel Chivukuvuku, promoter of the PRA-JA Serve Angola political project.
The UNITA leader, urged by Lusa to comment on the end of the armed conflict, reached on 4 April 2002, considered that "20 years [of peace] is not a short time".
According to Adalberto Costa Júnior, this period allows for a time of peace, but "Angola has this negative burden".
"You cannot continue to talk about war, hatred, to justify the failure to carry out the great acts of today, particularly when we have had an extraordinary accumulation of financial resources and when we have again an oil boom, bringing extraordinary resources, who should teach our Government that these excesses, these availabilities, should go to strategic reserves to prevent the future and to be directed to Angolans, to improve the lives of Angolans", he stressed.
The UNITA leader reiterated that 20 years "is a long time", noting that his party is an integral part of this peace process. "We worked every day so that this peace had definitely come to stay, for the deepening of its conditions", he said.
According to Adalberto Costa Júnior, peace had several aspects, namely military, civil and social peace, "that which transfers to Angolan families the stability and dignity of their lives and, unfortunately, the 20 years did not bring all these realities ".
"Fortunately, they brought the non-return to the war and this is more than a given, but we need to acquire the complement", he underlined.
The date is celebrated in an election year, "where very visibly", commented Adalberto Costa Júnior, they want to throw "the stigma of violence" on the party.
"And we make use of these opportunities to appeal to everyone, not to get distracted, to put their foot on these banana peels. We have to say no to violence, yes to peace, yes to dialogue, to the deepening of a democracy plural and, therefore, each one of us should not respond, feeling entitled to respond, even when attacked, when the institutions tell us that they are expecting exactly this bad behavior", he said.
