The leader of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Adalberto Costa Júnior, launched the campaign together with the president of the Democratic Bloc, Filomeno Vieira Lopes, and the coordinator of the political project PRA-JA Servir Angola, Abel Chivukuvuku, which are part of a platform for political change.
Adalberto Costa Júnior said that the country is a few days away from the start of the electoral campaign, more specifically on the 23rd of July, considering the amount allocated by law by the Government to the competing political parties to carry out the electoral campaign insufficient.
The head of the UNITA list stressed that they have "a strong project of political alternation", reaffirming the "firm conviction" that these elections will be won by this party supported by these political forces and civil society.
The politician questioned the equal treatment by the State between opposition political parties and the political force that supports the Government, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), stressing that "this is an element of great concern".
"We don't live in a democracy and starting a campaign in which the regime party goes to the public coffers to finance its campaign is something absolutely unacceptable and that is exactly what is happening", he said.
Adalberto Costa Júnior cited the interview that the President of the Republic, João Lourenço, recently gave to RTP Africa, in which he "assumed that he had committed embezzlement, clearly".
"Because he asked why I, as President of the Republic, will not use state means in party actions, in my party's campaign actions. This is a scandal", he considered.
According to the UNITA leader, what is most worrying are not quantities, but "equal treatment, disrespect for the Constitution".
"We left with completely different conditions under the absolute shameful silence of our institutions and the question is: in a week and a half when the campaign starts, will we continue to see this differentiation of treatment", he questioned.
In a comparison with the last elections, held in 2017, Adalberto Costa Júnior recalled that that year there was a dialogue, a negotiation, between the political parties with parliamentary seats on the value to be attributed to the electoral campaign, which was accepted by the Government.
"Today, dialogue is much more difficult, there was strictly no space for dialogue. We live today, at this level, a deficit for which we will never tire of calling the need to achieve it. There is no institutional dialogue and we regret it" , he stressed.
Initially, the Government had approved a budget of 444.8 million kwanzas for public funding of the electoral campaigns of each of the seven political parties and a coalition competing for the general elections of 24 August this year.
After a review, this budget was changed in a presidential decree to 1.1 billion kwanzas for each of the competing candidacies approved by the Constitutional Court.
