The assessment was presented by the president of this mission, José Carlos Barreiros, who added that the vote took place "fundamentally in accordance with Angolan legal principles".
Safeguarding that the mission's objective is not to criticize but to make recommendations, José Carlos Barreiros acknowledged, however, that on the day of the vote there were "circumstantial disturbances at the beginning of the work", which he said "were due to delays in the opening of the vote and extinguished immediately with the normalization of the process".
Consisting of 16 observers, who were divided into six teams, the mission's work began on the 16th of August and ended this Thursday, having followed the voting on the 24th, including the opening and closing of 80 polling stations distributed by the provinces of Luanda, Bengo, Benguela, Cuanza Norte and Cuanza Sul, with a total of 34,206 registered voters.
Until voting day, ROJAE-CPLP met with political parties and the Angolan state media (radio, television and Jornal de Angola) and with the Catholic private broadcaster Rádio Ecclesia, with José Carlos Barreiros refusing to comment on the coverage by election campaign press.
"The mission does not comment on aspects related to the electoral campaign and its media coverage because the duration of its work did not exceed 10 percent of the total campaign time and therefore the observation is not significant", he justified.
The imbalance of media coverage by the state press in Angola was one of the main criticisms of the opposition, a situation that was also mentioned by analysts contacted by the Lusa agency.
"In any case, the mission is pleased with the efforts that will be made to reinforce equal opportunities for candidacies and the maximum possible separation between the exercise of public functions and the activity of candidates and candidacies", he said in the the president of the ROJAE-CPLP electoral observation mission.
Regarding the voter registration, José Carlos Barreiros defended that "the introduction of measures that allow knowledge of the situation of each citizen in relation to the registration and the access of delegates to information about who votes in each section, would favor the transparency of the process and would obviate disputes that are often excuses".
ROJAE-CPLP, created on December 13, 2018, is a non-profit association that brings together the jurisdictional and electoral administration bodies of the CPLP member countries, united by the historical, cultural and friendship ties existing between these countries, having, in common, the Portuguese language as one of the foundations of their identity.
