Angola: MPLA rejects Venâncio's candidacy for party leadership

O MPLA announced today that militant António Venâncio's candidacy for the leadership of the ruling party in Angola was rejected by insufficient subscription forms.

The decision was justified with the number “far from the 5,000 subscriptions” required, in a statement read by Job Capapinha, coordinator of the subcommittee of candidatures of the National Preparatory Commission of the IX Ordinary Congress of the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).

The congress is scheduled for December 9th and 10th and the decision announced today and the previous refusal of Higino Carneiro's candidacy, the party president and President of the Republic of Angola, João Lourenço, was the only one accepted for leadership candidate.

António Venâncio's candidacy was presented on October 23, two days before the official deadline for the submission of candidatures to the congress.

The coordinator of the subcommittee explained that the agent delivered 34 folders, four of which were immediately excluded, and without confirming the number of declarations with subscriptions in the others.

At the moment, the agent will have confirmed, as he said, “the absence of subscription processes in six” of the 19 provinces of Angola.

“ After analysis and opinion, the sub committee found only 2,918 registered and confirmed subscriptions, far from the 5,000 required subscriptions”, said the coordinator.

Job Capapinha also said that of the 2,918 subscription forms that were cleared, 459 were considered valid, corresponding to 15.7%, and 2,459 not valid, 84.3%.

“ Therefore, this subcommittee considered the application submitted as void,” he said.

The subcommittee had already considered no other application, that of General Higino Carneiro, submitted on 25 June, and rejected less than a month later on the grounds that “of the 19,158 subscription forms that the applicant claimed to have delivered, the subcommittee found that they were only 14,493, of which 2,561 were valid (17.6%), 9,659 not valid (66.6%) and 2,273 false (15.6%)”.

The general appealed in the forums of the party, with the maximum body between congresses, the Central Committee to confirm the decision to cancel the application and to initiate disciplinary proceedings against Higino Carneiro, “on the grounds of the violation of the rules voluntarily and consciously of the ethical and moral duties imposed by the statutes and the party ethics code of the MPLA”.

The Central Committee has also decided to report the facts to the Attorney General’s Office because it believes that there are “strong beginnings in the practice of crime of forgery of documents”.

The general has already been heard in the disciplinary committee of the MPLA, but has not spoken publicly about the hearing.

Higino Carneiro also took the case to the courts and looks forward to the proceedings, including a restraining order lodged on 26 October in the Constitutional Court, to try to prevent the annulment of his candidacy.