The president of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), Adalberto Costa Júnior, said that the process of indictment and impeachment of the President has been going on for a year and that it could be taken to international institutions.
“We hope that the Constitutional Court does not delay this response too much, because, depending on the response from the Constitutional Court, we will have exhausted what the law requires of us, Angolan law or recourse to all legal instances in Angola”, stated the leader of UNITA, at a press conference in Luanda.
Adalberto Costa Júnior said that, having exhausted all internal mechanisms of appeal regarding the impeachment process of João Lourenço, UNITA will be in a position to seek other internal or external options.
He pointed to the judicial bodies of the African Union and other international bodies as channels of appeal, “always in pursuit of respect for the law, the search for stability and the defence of the democratic and legal State”.
The process of indictment and impeachment of the President – an initiative of the UNITA parliamentary group – began a year ago and aims to hold João Lourenço politically accountable for crimes allegedly committed by him while in office, for alleged violations of the Constitution, attacks on the Democratic State and the Rule of Law, for subversion of budget implementation rules, as well as for corruption, embezzlement and other practices.
The MPs of the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) voted against the impeachment of João Lourenço, in an extraordinary plenary session held on 14 October 2023, marked by strong protests from UNITA, which accused the president of parliament of violating legal precepts on the creation of an Ad Hoc Committee that should prepare a report-opinion on the process, proposed by 90 UNITA MPs and which would then be discussed and voted on in plenary.
UNITA subsequently submitted two lawsuits to the Constitutional Court last December, one on the “successive abstract review of the constitutionality of a rule in the National Assembly’s rules of procedure” and the other on “parliamentary litigation” within the scope of this process.
These cases were admitted by the Constitutional Court, which last April refused to declare the unconstitutionality of a parliamentary rule which, according to UNITA, violates the Constitution and made it impossible to discuss the process of impeachment of the President of the Republic.
In a ruling consulted by Lusa at the time, the judges of the Constitutional Court decided to “deny the request for a declaration of unconstitutionality of rule no. 3 of article 284 of the National Assembly’s Rules of Procedure [on the creation of an Ad Hoc Committee]”.
This Wednesday, the president of UNITA also asked the Constitutional Court to “speed up” its response to another UNITA action (on parliamentary litigation), stating that there had been “multiple violations” of the Constitution and the parliamentary rules of procedure.
“No parliamentary group has ever received from the office of the president of the National Assembly the content of the process of impeachment of the President of the Republic and there has been no resolution on this matter”, he stressed, recalling the episodes of the plenary session of 14 October 2023.
Adalberto Júnior argued that the Constitutional Court “must be free from the orders of the executive branch” and that this body must act as a guarantor of the uncompromising defence of rights and the Constitution. “Angola urgently needs an independent judiciary at all levels”, he also responded to Lusa.
