Angolan NGOs call for immediate inclusion of legislation

Oangolan non-government organisations (NGOs) today defended the “immediate inclusion” of local legislation on the parliamentary agenda for the approval of missing diplomas and extensive national public hearing process.

In an open letter to the president of the Angolan National Assembly, OMUNGA, UPANGE, Friends of Angola and ALDA expressed their concern about the statements made by Angolan President João Lourenço on local elections.

“ Our demonstration focuses on the urgency of the completion of institutionalization of local authorities, a constitutional imperative enshrined in Article 217 et seq. of the Constitution of the Republic of Angola”, reads in the letter sent to Lusa.

Members of the National Assembly call for immediate inclusion in the agenda of the work of this legislative year, the discussion and approval of the remaining local legislation, “promoting necessary consensus” between parliamentary groups.

They defend public hearing and citizen participation in this process, considering that the conduct of extensive consultations with the populations of the 21 provinces of Angola should ensure that civil society, traditional authorities and citizens in general are active in building the local model.

On Thursday, the Angolan President urged the opposition to unlock the impasse in the National Assembly for the creation of local power in the country, and said that the creation of elected municipalities is dependent on parliamentary consensus.

João Lourenço, who spoke at the opening of the last parliamentary year of the Fifth Legislature, said that “it is up to Members, the different parliamentary groups to make the difficult but possible effort to overcome the impasse”.

He called for closer positions for the closure of the process that has opposed the MPLA (Popular Movement of Liberation of Angola), party of the President of the Republic and mostly in parliament, to the main party of the opposition, UNITA (National Union for Total Independence of Angola).

For organisations that subscribe to the open letter, the lack of consensus on the structuring aspects of the local legislative package “is the basis of the delay, if not a step backwards, in the process of decentralization of power”.

“It is urgent to find a way out with the active participation of the sovereign people”, they observe, stressing that they agree that the approval of the implementation of the municipalities by only one party “generates illegitimateity of the process, hence the importance in creating synergy with the participation of all”.

At least ten diplomas in the local legislative package, submitted to Parliament by the executive, have already been approved, with only three and one bill on the effective institutionalization of UNITA's own-initiative authorities.

The Head of State defended, in his message to the nation, that “the country needs to create and deploy local power” and recalled that it led to the Council of the Republic on 22 March 2018, the proposal for its creation.