Speaking in a videoconference with journalists, Adalberto da Costa Júnior said that the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) will move forward with a broad agreement with other political parties and civil society. "There are still a few steps to go. Maybe next week we will have all this formatting completed".
The UNITA leader, who is in Rotterdam participating in the European People's Party congress, added, "without formally opening the game", that his party will have "in the lists the plurality that it has been sharing with civil society", days after the Constitutional Court informed that it would not allow the coalition of the main opposition forces, the United Patriotic Front (FPU), which would bring together the 'Black Rooster' party, the Democratic Bloc and the movement led by Abel Chivukuvuku.
Asked about the announcement made at the last meeting of the Central Committee of the MPLA, a party in power since independence, in 1974, about the list of candidates for deputies and which for the first time puts a woman, Esperança Maria Eduardo Francisco da Costa, current secretary of Estado das Pescas, director of the Botany Center at the Agostinho Neto University as a candidate for vice-president of the Republic, Adalberto da Costa Júnior limited himself to saying that "in the formal plan there is still no candidacy".
"UNITA goes to the elections with its name and its symbols. We have an agreement with other political forces, but it is not a coalition", he added.
Adalberto da Costa Júnior reiterated in the meeting with journalists the criticism he has directed at the MPLA, namely João Lourenço, leader of the ruling party, who he accused of maintaining the same operating logic he inherited from José Eduardo dos Santos.
"We have a political system that is one-person, which is characterized by the shameless interference of political power over the judiciary. There is no judicial independence", he accused.
"We thought that with the departure of José Eduardo dos Santos there would be an opening and transparency and with João Lourenço authoritarian tics were accentuated. From José Eduardo dos Santos to João Lourenço nothing has changed in the fight against corruption", he stressed.
"The president changed, but the elites did not change. João Lourenço promotes corruption and governance at any price", he continued.
Regarding the polls that have been released, the UNITA leader said that his party ordered one, "with more than 100 items", which is being "extremely interesting" and will now be updated.
"I have conditions to be the next President of Angola", he stressed, although he recognizes that "there are no anticipated victories".
The portrait he drew of Angola shows, he accuses, "an increasingly instrumentalized (state) media, in which there is no right to contradictory".
"It shows that the MPLA is scared," he said.
In terms of the economy, the UNITA leader said "he does not want to be an extremist and say that nothing has been done", but, he regrets, Angola has 20 years of peace "and major reforms have not been carried out".
Adalberto da Costa Júnior also criticized the current privatization program, considering that the country "does not have a market economy, because the current government builds monopolies and directly kills competition".
Privatizations "are being done in a negative way for the national interest. Only the same four or five companies that receive public funding are competing," he said.
Among the major reforms that he proposes to carry out if he wins the elections, Adalberto da Costa Júnior chose the revision of the Constitution, which would put an end to the indirect election of the President of the Republic.
"A reform of the State is necessary. The departisanship of the State", he defended and advanced that UNITA has been contacting the institutions and the MPLA itself "so that a peaceful transition of power can be ensured".
Asked if the August elections are being organized as they should be and if they will be fair, the UNITA leader accused the MPLA government of having already demonstrated that they were not, but rejected that there could be riots in the streets after the elections.
"No one has weapons anymore," he stressed.
