Africa-Press – Cape verde. The president of the UCID, João Santos Luís, assured that the party’s priority for the year that is now beginning will be to work to achieve a “balance of forces” in the country’s municipal councils.In an interview with Inforpress to look at the strategies outlined for the new year, João Santos Luís looked back at 2023, which he considered to have been a year of “a lot of work” and which allowed the Independent and Democratic Cape Verdean Union (UCID – opposition ) currently have seven organized party structures, six in Cape Verde and one in the diaspora, in the Americas.
However, according to the same source, the party’s focus is now on 2024, which, he maintained, “will be an extremely demanding and challenging year”, taking into account the local elections taking place between October and November.
“It is a year that will require a great sacrifice on the part of all leaders, activists, supporters and friends of the party so that we can achieve the recommended objectives and outline the strategy that we mirror in the March 2022 Congress”, he noted.
João Santos Luís assured that they are doing work, from the outside in and from the inside out, in an organized, thoughtful way and that should achieve some results, including improving the results of the elections.
In this sense, he added, the UCID works to achieve a “balance of forces” in the different municipal councils where it should compete.
“The balance of forces is fundamental, both in central power and in local power. The country has had resources that if they were used well, used in a harmonious, respectful, careful way, the country would be on another level”, he argued.
“This balance could happen now in 2024 where we will apply”, he predicted.
However, the president of the Christian Democrats pointed to the example of São Vicente, where they share power in the chamber and municipal assembly with the Movement for Democracy (MpD, power) and the African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV, opposition).
“We achieved this balance in 2020, but the person who was elected president of the chamber never had this capacity for dialogue to the point where things worked”, lamented João Santos Luís.
Even so, he guaranteed that they will take this “risk” which, he considered, comes from the state of Cape Verdean democracy, in which “some people lack to show an adult and responsible attitude”.
On the other hand, according to the same source, one of the difficulties encountered in achieving this objective is the fact that “very few people” are willing to participate in the UCID lists.
A behavior, he admitted, is the result of a democracy, in which people are “afraid” of participating in party lists such as the UCID, which is not yet part of the power for fear of being “threatened, ignored and persecuted”.
João Santos Luís, who did not want to give names, assured that there were cases of “harsh persecution”, for example on the islands of São Vicente and Sal, mainly in the public sector.
Despite the constraints, he assured that they will continue to work because “any absolute majority attributed at the polls is bad for the country and the island”.
Asked about the “malaise” registered during the 2021 presidential elections, in which the UCID decided to support the candidate Carlos Veiga, Santos Luís assured that it is already outdated with the new leadership elected in 2022 “thinking differently”.
“We must have the ability to do things differently so that people can see in our interventions, in our conversations with activists, with supporters and with the population in general, so that they can see that attitudes have changed and are different in a positive way”, launched, with the idea of being prepared to make their “valuable contribution”.
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