A group of citizens residing in Angola and in the diaspora launched a petition addressed to the National Electoral Commission of Angola (CNE), in which they demand the purging of the electoral rolls of “millions of deceased people”, according to the petition.
The petition, launched two days ago and which so far has 138 signatures, according to one of its co-signatories, expresses the “indignation” of its promoters regarding the data entered in the Computer Archive of Older Adults (FICM), affirming that “they do not comply with the norms that regulate the active electoral capacity” in the terms of the Angolan Constitution and the electoral law of the country.
According to the text, the national register of voting citizens is “overshadowed by the registration of millions of deceased people”, assigns an unidentified number of “two electoral colleges to a single qualified voter”, or stipulates the electoral college “to thousands of kilometers of distance”. “of residence” of voters, and excludes the right to vote for a number, also unidentified, of voters from the diaspora, who for the first time will be able to vote in the elections scheduled for August 24.
These irregularities, the petitioners underline, constitute arguments that justify the “predisposition to challenge the electoral process” before the Constitutional Court of Angola, a possible action for which possible legal representatives are already in contact.
The signatories, therefore, demand that the CNE return to the electoral process “the necessary transparency and to the voting citizens the necessary confidence in the institutions” and decide “immediately to replace the regulations and the subsequent correction of the irregularities.”
“Failure to comply with what is inscribed in the Constitution” will lead to “the revocation and challenge of the electoral process,” the text announces.
The first signatories of the petition are Ulika Gisela PF dos Santos, Manuel Fragoso, Laura Macedo, Manuel L. Dias dos Santos and Gabriel Baguet Júnior.
“We put the petition on the air 48 hours ago. Our objective is that the petition can reach the greatest number of Angolan citizens, both in Angola and abroad. 138 signatories have already signed. Our intention is to organize face-to-face press conferences in Lisbon and Luanda next week”, Gabriel Baguet Júnior, one of the promoters, told Lusa.
“Our intention is that this request reaches the president of the European Commission, the secretary general of the United Nations and other international organizations, because we defend that it is important that these elections are, in fact, fair, transparent and free”, the activist also announced. .
The petition, according to Baguet Júnior, has “no” partisan motivation, it results from “an absolutely free position, it is an exercise of conscious citizenship.”
“Our concern is that voter registration is fully transparent,” says the same source.
The controversy surrounding the deaths with constant active electoral capacity in FICM has been dragging on for weeks in Angola, several parties and civil society organizations have already spoken out on the case.
The situation can be confirmed simply by sending a message to a number provided by the CNE, which allows voters, through their identity card number, to know where they will vote on August 24, the date of the general elections in Angola.
Source: Observadora
