The Constitution stipulates that elected heads of state serve only two terms, of five years each, and the idea has been germinating, with analysts from the Economist Intelligence Unit arguing, in November 2023, that President João Lourenço will circumvent the constitutional impossibility to present himself to the electorate for the third time.
The position of President of the Republic is filled indirectly, with the first candidate from the party with the most votes being designated as head of the State.
With the entry into force of the new constitutional text, this is what happened in 2012, when José Eduardo dos Santos completed his last presidential term, defeating Isaías Samakuva, and again in 2017, when he, on that occasion, lost to João Lourenço, who , in turn, is in his second term after having defeated Samakuva's successor in the leadership of UNITA, Adalberto da Costa Júnior, in 2022.
Isaías Samakuva told Lusa that he warned João Lourenço that “the country would go into overdrive” if the third term was implemented.
“In fact, I asked him that question clearly. I said to him: ‘I don’t know if you’re the one putting this on yourself. If they are yours, your collaborators’. But he didn’t answer me,” said the former party leader.
In an interview with Voice of America, in December 2022, João Lourenço denied that he was looking for a third term.
"We have just come out of the elections now. The next ones will be in 2027. My answer has been given, maybe we can talk about this later in 2027", stated the President in another interview with the television channel France24 in May 2023.
In the interview with Lusa, in Lisbon, where he traveled to present the book by journalist Xavier de Figueiredo about the founder of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, Samakuva considered that “there is a kind of evasiveness” when João Lourenço addresses the topic.
“And this feeds this third-term story,” he concluded.
Isaías Samakuva said that in the conversation he had with João Lourenço he warned him that a third term would only “bring problems”.
“I told him that the third term will give him nothing. On the contrary, it will give you problems. It's going to put the country on edge. Because that doesn't look good. It is not good because it is established in the Constitution that it is like this and we have to follow what is in the Constitution”, he reiterated.
