The message – "Dear candidates of all parties, to accept the mandates is to be complicit in a crime against the Angolan people", written in white on a black background – was published this Tuesday by the activist on his account on the social network Twitter.
In his publication, Beirão argues that "a politician to accept a mandate under these conditions is to resign himself to suspicion, to injustice and, above all, to accept that he was elected, not by the Angolan people, but by the MPLA, the CNE and the Constitutional Court, consummating a betrayal of the will of the Angolan people, the Sovereign, refusing them the right to have the peace of finally seeing their votes count".
Speaking to Lusa, the Portuguese-Angolan man defended that refusing to assume their mandates is "the only coherent thing" that deputies who claim that the electoral process was flawed can do.
According to the final tabulation minutes of the August 24 general elections, the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and its candidate, the outgoing President, João Lourenço, won with 51.17 percent of the votes, followed by the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), with 43.95 percent.
With these results, the MPLA elected 124 deputies and UNITA 90 deputies, almost double the 2017 elections.
UNITA, which does not recognize the results "because they are contrary to the will expressed by the majority of voters at the polls", and the Broad Convergence for the Salvation of Angola - Electoral Coalition (CASA-CE), which did not elect any deputy, judicially contested the results, but the Constitutional Court dismissed the appeals and last week validated the final results of the elections.
João Lourenço, re-elected President for the next five years, takes office on Thursday, followed by the elected deputies.
Some opposition parties are divided on whether or not to assume their mandates, while UNITA is considering "all scenarios", admitting to taking office in parliament.
Although acknowledging that it was "a little without great hope" that his message published this Tuesday would have any effect, Luaty Beirão said it was a way of expressing his personal opinion "as a citizen concerned with the fate of this country".
"The only coherent thing of those who claim to the end that the whole process was flawed and that the results are not those that are being officially presented (...) is not to legitimize these results with their presence in play institutions, institutions distorted by these same results", underlined the activist.
In his opinion, after not taking up their mandates, the parties should have "democratic struggle strategies that make life hell" for the President and the Government appointed by him.
"It's making everything illegitimate and mobilizing for strikes, permanent demonstrations with each law passed, with each decree that is issued, with each use of the treasury made, everything must be permanently contested every day, until it becomes unfeasible to govern", he defended, stressing that this contestation must be "always peaceful" and without "never resorting to means and expedients that end up contradicting the spirit of non-cooperation".
Asked if this would not paralyze the country, Luaty Beirão said that "the real idea is that the country has to be paralyzed".
"The country has to be paralyzed, because this is not a country, this is fantasy. And if we want to get out of fantasy, there must be courage and parties are instruments at the service of a popular will and they better than anyone else have the tools, machinery and structure to do this type of exercise", he argued.
Defending that Angolan civil society "is very fragile" and "has no convening power" so it "outsources this responsibility to political parties", Beirão regretted that they accept this responsibility "until the moment they are put in the line of fire".
"When the moment of tension arrives, the moment to take risks, they take off their bodies and go to the most comfortable path (...) because they are not willing to face the necessary fight" to expose "the fraud that is all this fake democracy" .
The activist stated that the electoral process "had everything to be contested" even before the 24th of August, and regretted that the parties that contested it had embarked on it, "dragging people with them and making people believe that they would defend democracy" until to the ultimate consequences.
