Businesswoman Isabel dos Santos will have to give up Russian citizenship if she wants to run for president of Angola, an impediment under the country’s constitution, jurist Sebastião Twenty-Five said today.
Isabel dos Santos is the firstborn daughter of former Angolan President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and Russian citizen Tatiana Kukanova and was born in Baku, then a Soviet republic and present-day Azerbaijan’s capital, 46 years ago.
The Angolan Constitution does not allow citizens with dual nationality to stand for the Presidency of the Republic, said the lawyer, recalling the recent example of Adalberto da Costa Júnior, who renounced Portuguese citizenship in order to run for UNITA leadership and thus also prepared the road to the presidential elections scheduled for 2022.
This will be just one of the conditions that the businesswoman, who admitted her intention to be a presidential candidate in an interview with RTP, would have to overcome.
The Angolan electoral system also determines that voting for a party or coalition for which Isabel dos Santos would have to run on the lists of an existing party, or create a new one to be elected, which, Sebastião Vinte Five said, would not be a big deal. impediment given the “financial power and influence” of the daughter of the former President.
Isabel dos Santos may also be subject to the process in which she is involved in Angola due to the provisional seizure of her bank accounts and shareholdings in Angolan companies, determined by the Luanda Provincial Court.
“If it evolves into a criminal charge and if there is a conviction, one of the effects may be to condition your political rights,” explains Sebastião Twenty-Five.
His absence from the country in recent times is another obstacle indicated by the lawyer, who added, however, that it can be remedied if a “timely” justification is presented.
Asked about the allegations of persecution and attempted political neutralization that Isabel dos Santos invoked in the television interview, Sebastião Vinte Cinco considered that this “idea does not seem sustained”, given the period of “political amnesty” granted by the current executive for people to participate. voluntarily in the recovery of assets by the Angolan state.
The lawyer said that President Joao Lourenço, making the fight against corruption a priority “opened a door” for the voluntary repatriation of assets that the state lost over several years.
“There was this open door that was taken advantage of by many”, he noted, but not all.
“[Se estas pessoas] have taken this position of not collaborating with the installed political power in order to recover assets and promote a recovery of our economy it is normal that the state, using its judicial power, can seek to go information to realize how some people have become so moneyed “coinciding in some cases with the exercise of state functions or managing state assets,” said the lawyer.
And Sebastião Twenty-five concluded: “Therefore, it does not seem to me that from the technical point of view this idea of persecution is sustainable.”
On whether the disappearance of other names, who were also involved in court cases, means that the property has been returned, the lawyer said that because justice is not acting, it appears that they have agreed to cooperate and build a settlement. new relationship with power.
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