Day: June 20, 2022

An 18-year-old from South Korea has won the 16th Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, one of the top showcases for the world’s best pianists.

The competition held in Fort Worth, Texas, ended Saturday night with Yunchan Lim becoming the competition’s youngest winner of the gold medal. His winnings include a cash award of $100,000 and three years of career management.

The silver medalist was Anna Geniushene, a 31-year-old from Russia, and the bronze medalist is Dmytro Choni, a 28-year-old from Ukraine.

Lim told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that he’ll discuss with his teacher what the next move for his career should be.

“I am still a student and I feel like I have to learn a lot still,” Lim said. “This is a great competition and I feel the burden of receiving this great honor and award so I will just push myself to live up to the honor I received today.”

The competition was founded in 1962 in honor of the celebrated pianist Van Cliburn, who lived in Fort Worth. Cliburn, who died in 2013 at age 78, played for U.S. presidents, royalty and heads of state around the world. He is best remembered for winning the first International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow in 1958, at the height of the Cold War.

The competition is traditionally held every four years. This year’s competition was originally scheduled for last year but was postponed due to the pandemic.

Source: Voice of America

Saurimo – Nine trainers to train electoral civic education agents in Lunda Sul province are participating since today, Monday, in Saurimo, in a training action promoted by the Provincial Electoral Commission (CPE), under the scope of the general elections on August 24.

The training session will last for two working days, and the participants will address issues related to the electoral administration body, the electoral civic education campaign, the role of the agent, campaign phases, the constitution and foundations of polling stations, monitoring and observation, the voting process, and counting and clearance.

At the opening session, the president of CPE/Lunda Sul, Justino Africano, praised the training carried out by the institution, which will allow new knowledge acquisition, so that the people involved in the electoral process, correctly execute the missions that will be assigned to them, with greater incidence on civic electoral education in the communities.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Ondjiva – The future provincial trainers for electoral civic education agents, in Cunene, have been receiving since today, Monday, in Ondjiva town, knowledge as part of the preparation for the 24 August general elections.

The acting president of the Provincial Electoral Commission (CPE) in Cunene, Afonso Ulombe, at the opening of the event, said the training is a follow-up to the launch of the electoral civic education campaign, aimed at preparing for the 2022 general elections.

“Civic and electoral education requires that we all engage ourselves so that the same process is developed and executed in compliance with the guidelines issued by the National Electoral Commission (CNE),” he stressed.

He said that the agents will have the task of raising the social and civic consciousness of the citizens, to participate in an active and responsible way in public life, through clarifications on how to vote, where to vote and why to vote.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Talatona – The Minister of Culture, Tourism and Environment, Filipe Zau, defended today in Luanda, a bet on sustainable tourism in order to materialise a future of economic growth and social welfare in the country.

The Cabinet minister, who was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of a hotel unit called Monalisa, said that the quality of services already noted in some provinces could help the country to gradually enter this competitive space of economic activity.

“It is through a quantitative and qualitative increase in national and international investment in the tourism sector that we will be able to better balance our balance of payments,” he said.

For Filipe Zau, the improvement of services, to be provided, and the diversification of the hotel offer will also provide greater competitiveness in the hotel sector, which will contribute, in a way, to the promotion of the qualitative boost to tourism at a national level.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – Angola is participating from Monday in Geneva, Switzerland, in the 20th meeting (20 REP) of the States-parties of the Convention (Ottawa Treaty), on the prohibition of the use, storage, production, transfer and destruction of anti-personnel landmines.

According to a press release to which ANGOP had access, the three-day meeting will assess the level of implementation of the Convention, the degree of its universalisation, the dissemination of the principles with a view to the means of accession and ratification, cooperation between states and cooperative compliance.

The report highlights that the Angolan delegation led by the Director-General of the National Mine Action Agency (ANAM), Leonardo Sapalo, will present the country’s advances and challenges in this area, focusing on the materialisation of Article 5 of the Ottawa Convention, referring to the clearing of all anti-personnel mines, as well as the work in favour of assisting victims of explosive devices.

Data from the National Mine Action Agency (ANAM) indicate that mine clearance in Angola may only be concluded in 2028.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – The National Patriotic Alliance (APN), a party without a parliamentary seat, on Monday submitted its candidacy to the Constitutional Court (TC), for the general elections to be held on 24 August this year, in Angola.

The party founded and led by Quintino António Moreira is the third political party to submit the list of candidates for President of the Republic, Vice-President of the Republic and deputies (MPs), after MPLA and CASA-CE.

MPLA, the ruling party, formalized its candidacy on 8 June, with a list of 355 potential deputies, followed by CASA-CE electoral coalition, on 15 June.

In the candidacy file delivered by its representative Tiago Soares, to the director of the Constitutional Court Office of the Political Parties, Mauro Alexandre, APN proposes Quintino Moreira as its candidate for the Presidency of the Republic and Ana Patrícia da Gama for Vice-President.

In the last general elections, in 2017, the APN was the least voted party with 0.5% of the votes, an insufficient result to elect a single member of parliament (MP) but enough to escape the extinction of the party.

The APN was founded by Quintino Moreira in 2015, almost two years after the extinction of New Democracy – Electoral Union (ND), a coalition of six political parties that won two MPs in the 2008 parliamentary ballot contested by 14 competitors.

The New Democracy – Electoral Union (ND), also founded by Quintino Moreira and mainly made up of young dissidents from the National Liberation Front (FNLA) – was one of 19 political parties dissolved by the TC in 2013 for not having achieved the minimum of 0.5% in the previous year of elections.

Meanwhile, at the time, 48 other political parties were also extinguished for not having participated in elections for two consecutive times, in accordance with the Law on Political Parties.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Luanda – Angola’s main opposition party, the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA), is to present onTuesday its candidacy to run for the general elections to take place on August 24, the Constitutional Court (TC) said Monday in a press release.

The candidacy files for the 2022 ballot must be submitted to the Constitutional Court from June 6 to 25, according to the electoral law.

So far, three political groups have delivered their proposals, namely the ruling MPLA, which holds 150 seats in the National Assembly (parliament), the electoral coalition CASA-CE, second largest political force in the opposition with 16 deputies and the National Patriotic Alliance (APN), a party with no parliamentary seats that Monday formalized the candidacy.

UNITA currently holds 51 seats from the total of 220 Parliament seats.

It was founded in 1966 by Jonas Savimbi and António da Costa Fernandes as a liberation movement, before becoming an armed rebellion after national independence in 1975.

With the signing of the Bicesse Peace Accords on May 31, 1991, which put an end to the one-party system then in effect in the country, UNITA was transformed into a political party.

Under the leadership of Jonas Savimbi it participated in the first general elections in Angola’s history held in September 1992 earning the status of Angola’s second largest political force with 70 deputies or 34.1 percent of the votes.

In the presidential elections held simultaneously with the legislative elections, its leader Jonas Savimbi won 40 percent of the votes against 49.57 the then MPLA leader José Eduardo dos Santos got.

The results required a second round of presidential voting, since neither of the two candidates achieved an absolute majority.

The second round was eventually made impossible by the armed conflict that triggered off, following Jonas Savimbi’s rejection of the presidential results claiming electoral fraud.

The resumed armed conflict interrupted the regularity of the electoral process until 2008, when the second general elections were held after the end of the war with the death in combat of the UNITA leader Jonas Savimbi on February 22, 2002.

In the following elections, UNITA led by Isaías Samakuva obtained 16 parliament seats (2008), 32 in 2012 and 51 in 2017.

The party is currently led by Adalberto Costa Júnior, former leader of the Parliamentary Bench (whip), who is running for the Presidency of Angola.

Current electoral system

From the total of 220 seats in the National Assembly (Parliament), 130 are elected for the “national constituency” and 90 for the provincial constituencies at a ratio of five seats for each of the country’s 18 provinces.

Each of the country’s 18 provinces represents one constituency plus the national constituency making a total of 19 constituencies.

Candidates run for all constituencies.

The first and second names on each competing list correspond respectively to the candidates for President and Vice-President of the Republic, thus the top two candidates of the political formation with the most votes in the general elections are elected to these positions.

The indirect election of the President of the Republic results from the new Constitution of the Republic approved in 2010, which received its first “amendment” (constitutional revision) last year, in an initiative of the Angolan Head of State, to allow voting abroad (Angolan diaspora).

Angola holds this year its fifth general election since the end of the one-party system in 1991, after those of 1992, 2008, 2012, and 2017.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Sumbe – At least thirty trainers of electoral agents in Cuanza Sul province are taking part from today, Monday, in a training session on electoral civic education, in the framework of the general elections on 24 August.

Speaking at the opening session, the chairperson of the Provincial Electoral Commission (CPE), Maria Cristina Dembi, stressed that the training aims to provide the province’s trainers with solid knowledge on the manual for civic electoral education, as well as to standardise the material to be lectured to the agents.

“With this training action, the provincial trainers will have the task of transmitting the instructions they will receive to the electoral civic education agents at the level of the municipalities and communes,” she stressed.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Dondo – The Minister of Energy and Water, João Baptista Borges, said Monday that the construction works of the Caculo Cabaça dam, in Cambambe municipality (Cuanza Norte), was the biggest public investment currently underway in the country.

Launched in 2017, the Caculo Cabaça hydroelectric project, under construction in Cambambe municipality, in Cuanza Norte province, will produce 2,172 megawatts (MW), and is expected to cost over USD 5 billion.

According to the project’s construction schedule, the first machine will start operating in 2024.

Caculo Cabaça will have five turbines, four of which will be at the main plant, with a nominal capacity of 530 MW each, and one at the ecological plant, with a capacity of 52 MW.

The project is part of a range of dams built in the Kwanza region, where the Cambambe (Cuanza Norte), Capanda and Laúca (Malanje) dams already stand out.

The Cabinet minister, João Baptista Borges was speaking to the press, at the end of the signing ceremony of the Collective Labour Agreement between the contractor CGGC) – CHINA GEZHOUBA GROUP COMPANY LIMITED, responsible for the construction of the Caculo Cabaça Hydroelectric Power Station and the workers’ tradeunion commission.

Source: Angola Press News Agency