According to Job Capapinha, leader of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), quoted by Emissora Católica de Angola, the party of "comrades", which elected 124 deputies in 2022, currently has a small budget.
"How many deputies did we lose in the 2022 elections? UNITA has 90, we have 124 deputies, do you know how many millions of dollars the party lost from the OGE [General State Budget]? in parliament, then the party's budget goes down," he said at the opening of a seminar by the MPLA's audit and discipline commission in Cuanza Sul.
"Our needs also have cuts because we are receiving less from the OGE", stressed Job Capapinha, also provincial governor in Cuanza Sul.
The MPLA elected 124 deputies in the general elections of 24 August 2022, 26 less deputies compared to the 2017 elections, with UNITA (National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) almost doubling the number by electing 90 deputies for the 2022-2027 legislature.
For Capapinha, also provincial secretary of the MPLA in the province of Cuanza Sul, the constituency where UNITA elected a deputy, the scenario of a reduction in the number of deputies could also come to pass in the municipal elections, if the "comrades sleep".
"And so, successively, [reduction of deputies] will happen with the municipalities, if we are also 'ngonhar' (local slang meaning sleeping or distracted) and we leave the municipalities for them [opposition] to take care of, when it comes to the accounts we will see that it was worth nothing to us", he warned.
Capapinha also considered that UNITA wants the "quick holding" of the municipal elections in Angola to accommodate the people with whom it "committed itself, inside and outside the country", in the 2022 elections.
"The problem is not in the municipalities, there will be, it is a constitutional precept, we will comply, but that is not what concerns our people at the moment, what worries our people at the moment are the basic conditions to live with or without municipalities", he noted.
"Right now, the millions and millions that you are going to spend on local authorities, you still do the fields, open fields and see if the people don't live well, they do. We also want [municipal elections], but we're going to take it easy and this information we have to pass on to the militants, all these difficulties that they are putting us, many are manufactured", he shot.
The first municipal elections in Angola still do not have a date set, and UNITA defends its realization in 2023.
The Law on the Implementation of Local Authorities is the only piece of legislation, which forms part of the municipal legislative package, which has not yet been approved by parliament.
