On the first date, scheduled for August 16 to 18, three candidates are running for the party leadership, while on the second date, from September 16 to 18, eight people are running for office, including the current party leader, Lucas Ngonda .
Speaking to Lusa, 81-year-old Lucas Ngonda, who has been in the party's leadership for more than a decade, said that the final preparations for the conclave are underway, formally running eight candidates for the position.
Meanwhile, a note distributed this week to the media reports on the holding of the V Ordinary Congress, to be held from 16 to 18 August, pointing out three names as candidates for the party's leadership, namely Pedro Dala, João Nascimento and Paulo Jacinto .
"This call is false, it is not from the party leadership. The party leadership has not yet issued calls for the delegates to the congress. This call has no value, it is not from the party leadership and the congress is the congress that the leadership of the party is organizing", said Lucas Ngonda, questioning the origin of the call and stressing that "the leadership of the party is led by Mr Lucas Ngonda".
According to the FNLA leader, the congress, under the motto "United in the Diversity of Ideas", more than a year late, has already had several postponements, for several reasons, the first being the attempt to hold a congress "where the unity of the party was reflected".
"These don't want unity, they went to hold the congress, it's not a valid congress, it's not a congress they're organizing, it's a group of individuals who want to take over the leadership of the party, that's it, but it's not a congress", he reiterated .
The expected number of delegates to the congress is 1600, however, it could be reduced to 1200, due to the situation of the covid-19 pandemic and compatible spaces to receive this amount of people.
"The rooms are very expensive and the FNLA is a party that has only one deputy in parliament, it does not have many resources, so we are seeing that the number of 1600 is reduced to 1200 delegates", he stressed.
Urged to comment on the motivations that led him to re-candidate and what will happen again for the party's militants, Ngonda commented that again he has nothing to present and he applied for the feeling he always had, that of "leaving the FNLA organized, stabilized and at peace, for a normal transition".
"All the more so because at my press conference, when I presented the candidacy, I said that I was not the incumbent candidate, I mean that my mandate is not a four-year term, but it is to prepare the transition and leave a party more or less stabilized is just that," he said.
The politician and deputy to the National Assembly stressed that he also received the request "from many people, many religious sectors, those who support the party" not to leave the leadership with its disagreeing members.
"They said that I shouldn't leave the party like that (...) because when one wins, everyone will fight. It's absolutely certain that the party will be much weaker than it is now. I responded to this call from the people, but my will I really wanted to leave, it's not now, but a few years ago that I always expressed the desire to leave the party leadership and do something else, but unfortunately, political life is like that, often it doesn't correspond to our desire." added.
In this sense, for the next general elections, scheduled for 2022, Lucas Ngonda said that he will not be the party's list head in the race for the Presidency of the Republic.
"I will not be a candidate for the head of the list, it is up to the militants, because even when I was a candidate, it was the militants who decided, I had nominated someone to be the head of the list, the militants decided and I also leave all this to the discretion of the FNLA militants", he referred.
"If they think I'm still good for something, I'll see, I'll reflect, to accept it or not, if they think I'm no longer good for anything, we'll find someone else who will head the list," he pointed out.
The IV Ordinary Congress of the FNLA, held in 2015, to which Lucas Ngonda was reappointed, was marked, on the first day, by clashes between militants from two wings of the party, which left one dead and 14 wounded.
Together with the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a party in government since 1975, and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), the largest opposition party, the FNLA was one of the nationalist movements involved in the war for Angolan liberation from Portuguese colonial rule.
Known as the "brothers' party", the FNLA was founded more than half a century ago by the historic Angolan leader Holden Roberto, but contrary to the weight of the MPLA and UNITA in the Angolan political plan, the FNLA currently has only one deputy in parliament and has been facing an internal crisis after the death of the founding leader in 2007, and all efforts made for reconciliation among the militants have been fruitless.
Lucas Ngonda, harshly criticized by party militants, who attribute to him the poor performance of the political force in recent years, was confirmed by the Constitutional Court, in 2011, as president of the FNLA, based on the results of a congress held in 2004, in which he was elected the party's first vice president.
