For the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the TC's ruling on the number of electoral commissioners that the party should appoint, via the National Assembly, to the CNE, "was not a fair trial nor in accordance with the law".
At a press conference in Luanda, the second vice-president of the UNITA parliamentary group, Faustino Mumbika, said that the party had sent the appeal to the TC on Monday asking for the reconsideration of the decision of that body.
The appeal is a legal instrument used to contest a judicial decision handed down in the first instance.
UNITA appealed this decision "because it considers that it violates its right to appoint seven citizens to the CNE (...). The main objective of the appeal is to review the decision, seeking its change by the same court", said the deputy.
"The central issue is very simple and is not even legal, it is political: our political system is partisan", he stated.
The Constitutional Court's plenary session recently unanimously rejected UNITA's challenge to the parliamentary resolution that sets the number of CNE members per party or coalition, considering that "there is no violation of the Constitution or the Law".
According to UNITA, the Constitutional Court's decision "is unfair, forced by political motivations and undermines the law", because, as Faustino Mumbika observed, given the results of the 2022 general elections, his party should nominate seven and not just four commissioners to the CNE.
UNITA believes that the Constitutional Court's ruling needs to be reconsidered, because the sentence "is reprehensible both in its assessment of the merits of the case, as well as for violating the appellant's fundamental principles and rights, and for disrespecting the sovereign will of the people expressed at the polls".
Last week, parliament approved the new composition of the CNE, assigning nine seats to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), four to UNITA, and one seat each to the parties Frente Nacional de Libertação de Angola (FNLA), Partido Humanista de Angola (PHA) and Partido de Renovação Social (PRS), all with parliamentary seats.
In this plenary session, UNITA, unlike the other parties, did not indicate the names of the commissioners for the CNE, when the president of the parliament, Carolina Cerqueira, announced that this party would indicate the respective names in another session.
This Wednesday, Faustino Mumbika rejected the existence of any inconsistency in the alleged acceptance of the four seats in the CNE, when he defends seven seats in that electoral body, arguing that the postponement of the indication of the names of the commissioners in the last plenary session was a moratorium by his party, before the appeal.
Regarding the judges' stance in assessing the appeal, UNITA is asking that "the political motivations and arbitrary actions that underpinned the parliament's decision be annulled".
The party also accused the President, João Lourenço, of "subtly usurping" the powers of sovereign bodies, namely the courts and parliament, "conditioning the actions of these bodies, to the point of imposing the denial of the will of the sovereign people expressed at the ballot box".
