Unita leader wants elections
2004-03-18 21:55
Cape Town - The leader of the main opposition movement in Angola, Unita's Isaias Samakuva, made a call on Thursday for the ruling MPLA (Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola) to hold elections in his country by September next year.
Speaking at the Cape Town Press Club, Samakuva - who has led what he described as a peaceful opposition party since June last year, replacing rebel Jonas Savimbi who was killed in battle two years ago - said there appeared to be a "reluctance" on the part of the current rulers to go for elections.
Predicting that his party - which has been going through the process of demobilizing about 80 000 soldiers since Savimbi was killed - would win such an election, he said: "We are worried. The last elections we had in the country were 12 years ago (in 1992).
"The mandate of the national assembly expired eight years ago. It is time to call elections," he said. He said his party was working on getting other opposition parties to support its call for a general election in 2005.
At present Unita (the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola) - which fought from the 1970s against the then Marxist MPLA with the aid of the then South Africa defence force and continued its battle through to the 1990s - has 70 of the 220 seats in the national assembly and four ministers in the 18-strong national government. But he said that they had to abide by the programme of the ruling MPLA.
'They talk about elections'
Samakuva, who is in South Africa to meet business, civic and government leaders, was asked whether the MPLA - which has been in power for nearly 30 years since the withdrawal of the Portuguese colonial administration - would be able to call free and fair elections. He responded: "They talk about elections. In practice all they do show that they are not prepared to hold elections. This is the problem."
He thought that the younger generation in the ruling party were keen to hold elections "but those in power" were a little more reluctant. Pressure had to come from the Angolan people backed up with the support of the international community.
Asked if he would form coalitions with other parties if he won power, he said that Angola was made up a various religious and ethnic groups and it was necessary that these were represented in government - not only the party that won an election.
Government should work in the interests of the people "rather than in the interest of itself", he said.
Samakuva's predecessor, Savimbi, was killed in February 2002. This opened the door to Unita to sign the Luena Memorandum of Understanding on April 4, 2002. This agreement established an immediate ceasefire and Unita's return to the peace process laid out in the 1994 Lusaka Protocol.