Luanda – The political coalition CASA-CE submitted Wednesday to the Constitutional Court (TC) the process for the formalization of its candidacy, to run for the general elections to take place in August 24, in Angola.
The process was delivered by the Coalition’s delegate for candidacies, Carlos Jacinto, to the director of the Office of Political Parties of the TC, Mauro Alexandre.
With this step, the Broad Convergence for the Salvation of Angola – Electoral Coalition (CASA-CE) becomes the second political organization to formalize the candidacy at the TC, after the ruling MPLA.
There are now 10 days left to the end of the candidacies delivery process for analysis by the Constitutional Court, which started on June 6.
After all processes are assessed by the said court, the political groups will have 10 more days to correct any flaws or insufficiency detected in their respewctive processes, according to the electoral law.
Founded by politician Abel Chivukuvuku, on April 03, 2012, almost four months before the general elections of that year, CASA-CE is currently the third political force in the country, after MPLA and UNITA, with 16 MPs represented in the Parliament as a result of the general elections held in 2017.
Since February 2021, the coalition is being led by Manuel Fernandes, who replaced André Gaspar Mendes de Carvalho, that replaced the founder of the coalition Abel Chivuvukuvu.
CASA-CE is composed of the Party of Free Alliance of Angolan Majority (PALMA), the Party of Support for Democracy and Development of Angola – Patriotic Alliance (PADDA-AP), the Angolan Pacific Party (PPA), the National Party for the Salvation of Angola (PNSA) and the Democratic Party for the Progress of Angola National Alliance (PDP-ANA).
Of the four elections already held in the country, CASA-CE’s first participation in a general election was in 2012, when it obtained eight representatives in Parliament with almost six percent of the vote.
In 2017, CASA-CE won 643,961 votes (9.4 percent), corresponding to the current 16 MPs, surpassing the Social Renewal Party (PRS), until then the second largest opposition party.
These will be the first democratic elections to include the vote of Angolans living abroad, following a constitutional revision approved in 2021.
The August’s general elections will be the fifth in the country’s history, since the abandonment of the one-party system (1991), with an inaugural vote followed by a violent post-election crisis in 1992.
The September 1992 crisis degenerated into a prolonged armed conflict that interrupted the regularity of the democratic process until 2008, the year the second election took place in Angola.
With the end of the war in February 2002, the country returned to the polls successively in 2008, 2012, and 2017.
Source: Angola Press News Agency