Frente Patriótica says regime "shamefully tried" to determine UNITA's course

For the FPU, a political platform in the opposition, the ruling 700/2021, of the Constitutional Court (TC), which annulled the XIII Ordinary Congress of UNITA, held in 2019 and which elected Adalberto Costa Júnior to the leadership, did not kill, but reinforced the spirit of the platform.

The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) held, between December 2 and 4, 2021, the XIII Ordinary Congress, pursuant to the aforementioned ruling, in which Adalberto Costa Júnior, the only candidate, was elected president of the party.

This Thursday, the FPU, which brings together UNITA, the Democratic Bloc (BD) and the political project PRA JÁ Servir Angola, was relaunched in Luanda, and Filomeno Vieira Lopes, president of the BD, said that the ruling of the TC "interrupted the practical process of establishing the Front, producing an accident on the way, but it did not kill".

"Before, it reinforced the spirit of the Front. The transformation of spirit into matter forces us to be here and now, more resolute and decisive, prohibited from failing, to consolidate, once again, the change that is imposed on Angola" , stated Filomeno Vieira Lopes.

The president of the BD, the president of UNITA and leader of the FPU, Adalberto Costa Júnior, and the coordinator of PRA JÁ Servir Angola, Abel Chivukuvuku, signed the declaration to relaunch this platform, proclaimed on 5 October 2021, in Luanda.

The FPU's desire to reach power in 2022, within the framework of the general elections scheduled for August, was reaffirmed by Filomeno Vieira Lopes, considering that "the time has come when the ruling party, moving from fragility to fragility, prepares its own agony and the conditions for its own replacement".

Abel Chivukuvuku stated, in his intervention, that "irrationally" between 2019 and 2021 the regime "tried to prevent a non-negligible segment" of citizens from being able to participate in national political life "by trying to derail" the legalization of the political project. "But here we are made of stone and lime ready to serve the country," he fired.

This year, he stressed, "once again irrationally and shamefully the regime has tried to determine the direction and leadership of a 50+ year-old party, UNITA, has failed." "Once again UNITA has proven maturity, cohesion and a sense of purpose," he noted.

According to Abel Chivukuvuku, in 2021 the frustrations of the Angolan people continued: "From a psychomoral point of view, the country today has no faith, citizens have lost hope, young people no longer dream and pessimism has made people live the day. -day and gave up on the future".

"It is our obligation to transform this psychomoral state of mind into faith, into spirit, above all to make Angolans believe that we are the ones who have to build our country and our happiness", he stressed.

Adalberto Costa Júnior, who delivered the speech alluding to the ceremony, said that the FPU "exposed the regime to its real weakness to the point of desperately embracing an act of authentic suicide by the democratic and ruled state".

"Judgment 700/2021 provided a generalized conclusion and an extraordinary national consensus: the urgent and absolute necessity of regime change, because it is totally exhausted and using the courts to create political, social and economic instability", he pointed out.

"Yes, the annulment of the UNITA congress had internal and international consequences, with regard to the lack of confidence in Angolan institutions", stressed the FPU leader.

Society "understood the risks and reacted strongly, with immense courage, denouncing the attacks on the Constitution of the Republic of Angola and on the Law", pointed out Adalberto Costa Júnior.

"The authors and principals of that initiative [decision of the TC] are today proving their own poison. Today, more than ever, Angolans show their firm decision to change", he maintained.

The FPU "is aggregating, a tool for all Angolans who feel and know that the time has come to rebuild the country, build a more just and democratic society, a society where there are no pockets of hunger, where there is not so much misery, corruption, dark business and so many superior orders," he stressed.

"On this broad front for alternation, there will be no specialist committees or superior orders to shelve solutions, but there is a sincere desire to work with everyone, everyone who wants to build a country that takes place every day, valuing work and transparency ", concluded Adalberto Costa Júnior.