Joo Lourenço, the president of Angola, avoided being removed from office last week, which allowed him to fly to Nairobi, Kenya, for a state visit and serve as the primary guest at the country’s Mashujaa (Heroes) Day celebrations.
But rather than being a win for his party, the unsuccessful motion served as a warning indication of his problems this term.
The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (Unita), the opposition, was soundly defeated by the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) at the impeachment motion held in Luanda on Saturday.
Around 90 opposition MPs signed on to Unita’s move to impeach the president. With 123 votes from MPLA lawmakers, two from the Humanist Party of Angola, and one abstention from the Social Renovation Party, the measure was ultimately defeated.
“The Unita Parliamentary Group clarifies that, under the terms of the Constitution and the Law, the voting carried out by the National Assembly is invalid,” Unita said in a statement after the vote.
“The Unita Parliamentary Group informs the public that the process of removing the President of the Republic from office will continue and reiterates that the defense of democracy and legality will continue to be its main motto,” it added.
Liberty Chiaka, the leader of Unita’s parliamentary group (PG), also charged the incumbent MPLA with intimidating opposition lawmakers into opposing the procedure. To move forwards with the impeachment procedure, Unita required the support of at least 111 MPs.
“… They (MPLA) said they will fingerprint the votes and find out which of the MPs voted against them,” Mr Chiaka said.
MPLA responded by accusing Unita of starting a process without legal basis. Jú Martions, an MPLA legislator said his party MPs “of course could not go along with this manouevre, with total disrespect for the rules of procedure of the national assembly, parliamentary ethics, and even the parliamentary table,” he said.
“The country has been kept almost in suspense on this issue for more than three months, and Unita PG has used every possible trick to intensify the process among the civil society,” he added.
The MPLA’s majority in parliament is one of its strengths. However, Lourenço has nonetheless faced criticism from outside the House despite this.
Following the 38-year presidency of José Eduardo dos Santos, Lourenço, 69, was elected president in September 2017. Despite a contentious election, he was sworn in for his second and last five-year term last year.
Supporters commended him during his first stint in government for combating corruption, which included a purge in the dos Santos family of the prior president. On the other hand, his detractors noted that he had employed collective punishment, including dismissing a number of security officials who were close to his predecessor.
Isabel dos Santos, the daughter of his predecessor, was fired from her position as CEO of Sonangol, the nation’s main oil corporation. José Filomeno dos Santos, the son of the former president, received a five-year prison term in 2020 for fraud and corruption.
Lourenço promised changes to support the private sector, diversify the economy away from dependence on oil, and combat youth unemployment during his inauguration speech delivered at Luanda’s famed Praca da Republica square last year.
But the frequency of street demonstrations against the increase in living expenses rose. In numerous regions, taxi drivers demonstrated against a recent fuel price increase. In Luanda, female street vendors and political activists also demonstrated against the rising cost of essential products.
“Things are getting worse every day in Angola. Prices are only going up. We’ve never been worse off than now,” José Tchimuko, 45, a street trader in Luanda told The East African, adding “things are even worse down there” in reference to his homeland in Huambo Province.
Human Rights Watch (HRW) stated in May that since President Lourenço assumed office in 2017, the human rights situation in Cabinda province (an Angolan enclave in the DR Congo) has remained bad, with several activists being detained for exercising their fundamental rights.
The senior Africa researcher for Human Rights Watch, Ms. Zenaida Machado, stated in August that “the Angolan police appear to be targeting those who speak out against government policies.”
The dos Santos family has indirectly reentered local politics by using the criticism. Tchizé dos Santos claimed earlier this month that her father was similar to the present president in that no one was ever detained for upsetting the late head of state, who, in her opinion, was unconcerned with social media.
In reality, the MPLA ruled the nation under dos Santos’s administration, and some journalists abandoned the nation.
Portuguese news agency Lusa quoted economist and political analyst Carlos Rosado de Carvalho as saying the nation’s economy had collapsed due to a weak currency.
“The inflation is out of control, the kwanza (local currency) is completely out of control, with foreign exchange crisis.
“In the economic terms, we have gone from heaven to hell, because in the [2022] elections, everything was fine, the country was growing, we were going to accelerate growth, the Kwanza was stable, inflation was under control, the public accounts were balanced and we realized that one year after the elections that there was none of that,” he added reviewing a year after elections.
The Freedom House, a press freedom advocacy group, claims that the governments of 69 other nations, including Angola, have long hired party members or hired operatives to secretly alter content online.
In a report titled Freedom on the Net 2023: The Repressive Power of Artificial Intelligence released earlier this month, it added that generative Artificial Intelligence technology is slowly beginning to enhance such distortion campaigns. Angola usually ranked 125 out of 180 countries surveyed by the Reporters without Borders this year.
Lourenço spoke to parliament for two hours and seventeen minutes two days after the motion was lost, claiming that the COVID-19 pandemic is still having a detrimental impact on the nation and that the loss in families’ purchasing power is a global problem.
“The reducing the tax burden, namely reducing VAT on some products will continue with the process of withdrawing fuel subsidies,” he said adding economic diversification will be also taken into account.
“We are transforming our country’s economic structure by no longer producing and exporting only oil. Oil revenues should be used less for the consumption of goods and services and more for spending on diversifying and promoting the non-oil economy,” Lourenço said during his speech.
Lourenço added that the state’s primary priorities continued to be the battle against corruption and the process of retrieving state assets.
“The country’s political and military situation is stable, and there are no relevant threats that could jeopardize peace, territorial integrity, sovereignty, stability, public order, or the normal functioning of constitutional bodies,” he added.
33 million people live in poverty in Angola, according to the World Bank, and the country’s economic diversification is still elusive despite diminishing oil production and the medium-term threat of global decarbonization.
“Angola needs to urgently invest in removing barriers to private sector investment to achieve economic diversification to support growth, job creation, and poverty reduction,” it added.
