Luanda – Angola President Joao Lourenco on Friday set out his party’s agenda ahead of general elections due in August, vowing to push efforts to revive the economy and fight corruption.
“Much has been done and will continue to be done in the fight against corruption and impunity, in creating a good business environment, in political reform,” he said.
Lourenco promised to raise the minimum wage, and to increase salaries for civil servants.
“We need to work hard to ensure that all our activists, supporters, and friends will exercise their right to vote,” he told a party gathering in the southern town of Menongue, according to a transcript from his office.
ALSO READ | Angola ruling party backs President Joao Lourenco for a second term
Lourenco’s Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) has ruled the oil-rich but impoverished southern African country since independence from Portugal in 1975.
But this year three opposition parties have formed a coalition, the United Patriotic Front, to challenge him.
The MPLA formally backed Lourenco’s candidacy last month.
Since taking office in 2017, he’s tackled a weak economy and launched an anti-corruption drive to recoup billions of dollars he suspects were embezzled under his predecessor, Jose Eduardo dos Santos.
That’s won him accolades from the International Monetary Fund, but yielded little for Angola’s impoverished people.
Inflation topped 25 percent last year. The World Bank estimates that 56 percent of Angolans live on less than $1.90 a day.
ALSO READ | Angola’s ruling party office torched during taxi strike
After emerging from decades of civil war in 2002, Angola enjoyed an oil boom.
That made Dos Santos’s family billionaires, and the government lavished money on vanity projects – like transforming Luanda’s ocean front into a billionaire’s playground lined with palm trees imported from Miami.
Lourenco’s campaign has homed in on Dos Santos’ family. His daughter Isabel is being investigated for allegedly syphoning state funds into offshore assets – accusations she vehemently denies.
Her half-brother Jose Filomeno dos Santos was sentenced to five years in prison in August 2020 for diverting oil revenues from Angola’s sovereign wealth fund, which he oversaw from 2013 to 2018.
Dos Santos himself is under presidential immunity from prosecution until later in 2022, five years after the end of his mandate.
Follow African Insider on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
Source: AFP
Picture: Getty Images
For more African news, visit Africaninsider.com
