João Lourenço was speaking this Tuesday in Cunene, south of the country, where he has been since Sunday on a working visit, which included the launch of the pre-electoral campaign of the Movimento Popular de Libertação de Angola (MPLA), a party that has supported the Government since 1975.
According to the President, in the five years of his term that are now ending, "a radical change was made with regard to the management of public affairs".
"I'm not saying that there are no managers who handle the public treasury, I wouldn't be telling the truth if I made that statement, we have to assume that there are still managers who handle the public treasury, but not with so much shamelessness, with so much lack of fear, as was done in the past", he said, in a 50-minute speech.
The MPLA leader stressed that managers are now more careful, knowing that "if they are caught, there will be no impunity".
"The great evil of the past was not just corruption, there was theft, because sometimes when we use the expression corruption it turns out to be a beautiful word and as the act itself is not beautiful, we have to call things by their true meaning name, corruption is theft", he said, stressing that more serious than corruption "was impunity".
"Nobody did anything, which ended up encouraging others to do the same. In this mandate, we took important steps in the fight against corruption", he stressed.
João Lourenço, who was speaking as a party leader, stressed that it is not yet possible to express total satisfaction with the results achieved, stressing that many resources have already been recovered, "but it is not enough".
"We need to recover much more, but above all we need to create mechanisms and create the mentality of our public servants, that the right path is not the path of corruption", he highlighted.
According to João Lourenço, with the money illegally subtracted from the State coffers in the past, several infrastructures could have been created, exemplifying the water supply system that opened, on Monday, in the town of Cafu, in Cunene, an investment of more than 130 million dollars, to fight the drought in that region.
"How many dams in Cafu could we build with the money already recovered from corruption and those not recovered, how many dams," he asked.
"This dam that we inaugurated yesterday cost about 137 million dollars, there are people who alone stole five, six, times more than that. were already made, with the money stolen by one person," he said.
The MPLA leader considered it absolutely necessary to fight corruption, a theme that marked his mandate started in 2017, having highlighted that the fight against this phenomenon is not only carried out by himself, but by all citizens.
Angola will hold its fifth general election in the second half of August.
