"It's good, during this time we had several meetings and almost always, I was the one who went to meet José Eduardo dos Santos. that relations are good", said João Lourenço, asked this Tuesday about his relations with his predecessor's family in an interview with RTP África.
"(But) my relations between him and me are one thing, another thing is the fight against corruption, which is not against people, it is not against families, it is against whoever is involved in these cases, then the Angolan justice will go after these people or families", he added.
Since he came to power in 2017, replacing José Eduardo dos Santos who, for 38 years, governed the fate of Angola, João Lourenço chose the fight against corruption as the main banner, and since then several legal proceedings have arisen against family members of the former president or his former collaborators, which some say is selective justice.
João Lourenço guaranteed, in the interview, that justice is acting at all levels: "it is not only hunting ministers and former ministers, directors and former directors, the fight against corruption is covering all levels of the base to the top and it's the courts that are doing it".
Regarding the process of recovering assets and repatriating capital from abroad, he admitted that the numbers are still far from ideal and that "it is almost impossible to recover 100 percent" what was diverted from the public purse, but, he underlined , will "continue to work in this direction".
He denied that the judiciary is bankrupt, noting that he has done, in four or five years, what the country has not done in more than forty years of independence: "There has never been so much freedom given to the judiciary to do justice."
On the use of means made available to the presidency of the Republic to campaign as president of the MPLA, which is running for a second term in the general elections of 24 August, he countered the criticism, invoking examples from other democracies, such as the United States, where this practice is common.
"I am the President of the Republic, I use vehicles, I use a plane that takes me everywhere, do you think that when I go out in party activity I should stop using those cars, those jeeps, the plane? I don't think so, and I don't have to hide this way of thinking", replied João Lourenço to the RTP journalist who questioned the head of state about the use of media in his dual capacity as government leader and party leader.
João Lourenço also pointed to the example of the United States, a country where the President uses Air Force One (presidential plane) during the election campaign.
He also rejected that opportunities and visibility in the public media should not be given to the leader of the main opposition party, UNITA (whose name he did not mention), stating that "the leader does not speak because he does not want to" and saying that if television does not takes the initiative to invite him, he should be the one to make that contact.
