By Marcolino Moco
Africa-Press – Angola. While both Agostinho Neto (AN) and JES (Brazilian President) remained silent on the issue of their succession, in the latter’s case until the eve of the 2017 elections, we see JLO very concerned about who would succeed him in the PR. In AN’s case, his behavior was more or less well-defined. We were in the constitutional and historical era of the (single) party/state, of one nation and one leader, as long as he was alive.
It all starts badly, because it’s largely inconsistent, with JES and his supporters. Because they failed to understand that the formal introduction of multiparty democracy, enshrined in Angola by Bicesse, was intended as a necessary correction, aiming to create a different type of state, one that should not prolong the suffering of the Angolan people resulting from the war and the establishment of a highly centralized economy inspired by Marxist-Leninist ideology, which was ultimately abandoned by the very bastions of that ideology (the USSR and the GDR), given its ineffectiveness.
In short, for those – especially young people – who don’t understand why I moved away from the path that the MPLA has followed, very visibly, since the late 1990s, here is the fundamental reason for my positions since then.
Because I and a few others (who, however, for various reasons have remained silent or have already left), had this understanding, long before the Bicesse Agreements.
With JES and his supporters—successive generations of MPLA politicians and others—the understanding was that acceptance of the new paradigm should be no more than a mere appearance, demanded by the domestic and international circumstances of the time. They said, and still say today, “power is not handed over on a silver platter,” even if it means the continued suffering of the people (I would add). This is the thinking that was enshrined in the 2010 Constitution.
As I said the other day in a lecture, the most illuminating metaphor for this idea of maintaining the single-party system by other means was that I still participated – with my strong opposition, of course – in the discussions that led to the conclusion that the program “Angola Combatente”, which came to us from the times of the armed struggle against colonization, on Radio Brazzaville, should continue to be broadcast on RNA, with the multi-party democracy already established, only changing its name to “Nação Coragem”.
Of course, with this mimicry, in which the idea of paradigm shift is not linked to the objective of “correcting what was wrong” in the philosophy, structure and strategies of the State, to better serve the populations, meant that even after the war, social conditions and the degradation of political ethics and morals reached such alarming levels that they led JES and many of his supporters and instigators to end up as victims of an incoherent system that abolished the mechanisms of party/State control, but prevented the creation of institutions of permanent self-correction, typical of the democratic and law-based State that was proclaimed.
Therefore, JLO’s concern about who will replace him, giving preference to someone who is young (inexperienced), after subliminal attempts to move to a third term, is nothing more than an error of optics, typical of the political mentality, in countries that drag themselves along in underdevelopment, regardless of the amount of resources at their disposal.
Here the focus of hopes for an escape from misery and suffering is placed on people deemed special (here, yes, deemed predestined), instead of on the proper functioning of institutions and their automatic capacity to call upon the best in political society to exercise high public functions, especially through free, fair and transparent elections, if we are living in a Democratic State governed by the rule of law.
But the most depressing thing is that the President, when publicly expressing his idea that electoral democracy is just a formality that has no value, both within his party and within the state’s political society.
He expresses his fears that something similar or worse than what happened to his predecessor could happen to him. And there he goes, repeating an equation that, as far as I can remember, has never worked, either for its formulators or for the members of the societies governed under these completely misguided slogans.
Let’s conclude by saying: what’s needed is to refound the State, according to that initial idea. Without this, there will be no good substitutes for anyone, nor will life improve for the elites, who will forever live under unnecessary pressure and apprehension; much less will the desire to substantially improve the lives of the Angolan people be fulfilled.
We’re all together and well-mixed. Contrary to that idea of vain vanity: that some shouldn’t mix with any “others.”
*Former Secretary General of the MPLA
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