Recent signs of openness by Angola’s famously opaque government have been welcomed by political analysts, but the oil-rich country must now turn the transparency talk into action, the same experts said.
Four Angolan ministers and the central bank governor gave an unprecedented press conference for local and international journalists last week, broadcast live on radio and television in a country not used to government openness.
Carlos Feijo, state minister for civil affairs, told journalists that transparency and good governance would be highlights of long-time Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos’ government under a new Constitution adopted in February.
Analysts said the conference was the first of its kind in Angola.
“The conference was transmitted live on radio and television, with a variety of questions from the journalists. It’s a sign that the new government is going to be closer to people,” said Moises Sachipangue of Angola’s state-owned TV network.
“It is a positive sign. This is something that never happened before,” Elias Isaac of the Open Society Institute said. “We have been used, for decades in the country, to have government officials who run away from the press, who don’t speak to the public and who don’t engage with the citizens.”
Dos Santos, Angola’s president for the past 30 years, could extend his grip on power for another decade under the new Constitution, which allows him to run for two more five-year terms.
The one-time Marxist clung to power through a 27-year civil war that ended in 2002, but has faced a presidential election just once, in a 1992 poll that was cut short by renewed fighting.
Dos Santos stepped away from his secretive style as he hit the campaign trail in 2008 for Angola’s first legislative elections in 16 years, swept by his ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA).
In November, he called on MPLA members to increase transparency and declared a “zero tolerance” policy on corruption.
“We should not condone corruption or the misappropriation of resources from public or party,” he said.
Angola rivals Nigeria for the title of Africa’s top oil producer, yet two-thirds of its population lives on less than US$2 a day.
The country recently fell in watchdog group Transparency International’s corruption index, moving from No. 158 place in 2008 to No. 162 last year, out of a total of 180 countries.
Human Rights Watch last month praised Angola for improving public access to its oil revenue figures.
However, the organization said: “If the Angolan government is serious about transparency and reform, it should rigorously investigate government officials, publish audits of its expenditures and act on President dos Santos’ pledge of zero tolerance.”
Isaac said improving transparency in the long term would mean increasing media freedom in a country where information is largely filtered through the state-run press.
“Democracy is synonymous to access to information, and one of the biggest challenges in this country is that public officials detain public information as their private property,” he said.
Sociologist Vicente Pinto de Andrade said the press conference was merely an image-building exercise at a time when the government is in trouble with the construction sector over late debt repayments.
“Angola needs debates, on radio and television, in which government will be confronted by the opposition, by civil society and also by academics,” he said. “For the moment, I see none of that.”
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