Rui Falcão was speaking to the press at the end of the opening ceremony of the new parliamentary year, in which the President, João Lourenço, portrayed, in more than two hours, the State of the nation, stressing, at the end, that any attempt to someone do the same exercise.
"Any attempts by someone to make a speech about the State of the nation will be an illegitimate exercise of usurpation of the powers that the Constitution confers only and exclusively on the head of State, who is a singular entity", said João Lourenço.
The spokesperson for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) also reinforced that "lying about what is written in the law is serious, especially at this level".
According to Rui Falcão, the message about the State of the nation reflects everything that has been done by the executive, with the conviction that there is still a lot to be done, ensuring that it is on the right path.
Regarding the municipal package, Rui Falcão highlighted that it will now be up to parliament, within the scope of approving the Administrative Division Law and creating objective conditions for the implementation of the process, to continue the work.
Rui Falcão rejected MPLA's accusations of lack of political will to implement local authorities in the country, stressing that Angola is a rule of law and nothing can be done without legal support.
"This legal body has to be created and the person who has to approve the legislative process, all the norms, is the National Assembly. The President [of the Republic] was right to say that the process is here, now we have to work more quickly, in a more dynamic way, in order to achieve this goal", he said.
Asked whether the legislative package could be completed in this parliamentary year that is now beginning, the MPLA spokesperson replied that it depends on the work of the National Assembly, adding that it is necessary to resolve the problem of administrative division in advance to assess at what level it can be start the municipal process.
João Lourenço stated that the executive "has long fulfilled its part", with the elaboration and presentation to the National Assembly of the proposed laws of the municipal package, for the institutionalization of local authorities, a situation that has "been dragging on for years" due to the search for "the greatest possible consensus".
The Proposed Law on the Institutionalization of Local Authorities is the only diploma in the municipal legislative package that has not yet been approved, having been scheduled since 2020, due to differences between the largest parliamentary groups.
The MPLA, the party in power and which has 124 of the 220 deputies in the National Assembly, defends the principle of gradualism in the implementation of local authorities, while UNITA, the largest opposition party, with 90 deputies, wants to hold local elections throughout the national territory simultaneously.
