"[The demonstrations that ended up being strongly repressed by the police] reached a gravity that I would not have expected," wrote Marcolino Moco, on the social network Facebook, which belongs to the Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), a party of which the President is also a member.
"It's a pity to see, and in a very deteriorated economic and social environment, that we are now, and so explicitly, using the same authoritarian methods that lead nowhere, especially at a time when new communication technologies are dominant," continued the former prime minister.
Marcolino Moco added that what "has been happening disastrously and regrettably, has been happening this way, and even before" Angola's independence, because the "leading elite" did not put the "accent on the idea of 'the common good'", but on "group interests".
Society is "devoid of a strategy of national interest, in an environment of building a nation-state and engagement of great complexity," added the former executive secretary of the Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries (CPLP).
"So let's not go there. But we're still on time - I think - and hopes have to remain, now that a new year is coming," said Marcolino Moco.
On October 24 and November 11, two demonstrations in Luanda that had been banned by the authorities, invoking the measures in force in the public calamity situation, were strongly repressed by the police, using tear gas.
A 26-year-old student died following clashes between police and youth groups who wanted to demonstrate for the improvement of living conditions and local elections in 2021 last Wednesday.
The police assured they used only non-lethal means and denied responsibility for the young man's death, but witnesses on the scene assured that Inocêncio de Matos was shot.
The medical report produced at the Américo Boavida hospital states that the student died due to an assault with an unspecified blunt object, but the family rejects these explanations and their lawyer has announced that he will prosecute the state and the police.
