An Angolan electoral specialist considered on Tuesday that UNITA’s intention to take the electoral process to international bodies is another “mechanism of pressure and lobby international law”, because this type of case is a “question of sovereignty”.
For Luís Jimbo, the intention of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), which wants to resort to international organizations to evaluate the transparency and fairness of the elections on August 24, is not really a judicial remedy.
“There is no international court that knows about electoral processes in other countries. In fact, they are pressure mechanisms, lobby International“, to “use as a space for pressure” in joint forums of which Angola is a part”, said the executive director of the Angolan Institute for Electoral Systems and Democracy (IASED), in statements to Lusa.
Luís Jimbo specifically referred to the Centro Democrático do Centro, an organization of which UNITA is a part and which brings together several parties from the center-right political spectrum: “It has space in the European Union and has lobby strong during the process of electoral organization and it is through this channel that, politically, in the international context (pressure) is done”.
The president of UNITA requested, on Monday, the judicial inspection of all electoral records held by the National Electoral Commission (CNE) and Angolan political parties, in order to confirm their authenticity.
In a statement on the electoral process, after the August 24 elections, Adalberto da Costa Júnior also proposed comparing the records of the various contenders with those of the National Electoral Commission and pointed out discrepancies of more than 500 thousand votes, which, he said, changes the results announced by the CNE in favor of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA).
Angolan Constitutional Court accepts precautionary measure issued by UNITA
UNITA filed an appeal, initiating an electoral dispute before the Angolan Constitutional Court (TC), pointing out alleged “irregularities in the process”, and admitted having resorted to international bodies “once Angolan law had been exhausted”.
According to Luís Jimbo, the TC is the last instance of internal appeal and affirms that the electoral process is an act of sovereignty: “Because the act of voting is a process in which we express our sovereignty and ends in the sovereign territory”, justified.
“We do not take a sovereignty issue abroad, in the same way that I have always defended that Indra (the Spanish company that manages Angolan electoral logistics) does not come to deal with a sovereignty issue within the CNE,” he added.
But in this case, he pointed out, “the TC is the last resort and even the court has limits to deal with a purely political issue, which is the legitimization of political power.”
“The court cannot say that it was worth it or not, there have to be mechanisms that ensure that the citizen who is going to vote and the politician who is a candidate are not harmed, there has to be justice and quick mechanisms,” he said. .
The IASED leader also said that the court “cannot question the sovereignty of all, because it knows that sovereignty is indivisible.”
This specialist in electoral matters and who was an observer of the August 24 elections also pointed out that the Angolan TC, in the way it presents itself as an electoral court, “does not have the adequate mechanisms to do electoral justice”.
“This is another problem we have, our electoral justice system needs to be discussed in depth to address the concerns of candidates and voters,” he stressed.
As long as this organization does not have the aforementioned mechanisms, he continued, “we are going to have this type of problem that, in this case, UNITA feels, that the court cannot solve the problem and then it is going to engage in political diplomacy and social pressure.” ”.
Last week, the president of the CNE, Manuel Pereira da Silva, announced the final count of the general elections on August 24, which proclaimed the winners to the MPLA and its candidate, João Lourenço, with 51.17% of the votes, followed by UNITA with 43.95%.
UNITA claims victory in the elections with 49.5% of the vote and accuses the CNE of “willful manipulation”
Source: Observadora
