Angola received higher marks this year on the Ibrahim Index of African Governance. But veteran Angolan journalist Rafael Marques de Morais does not believe the score is deserved. He says press freedom, in particular, has suffered in recent years, and corruption is widespread.

Marques de Morais runs the anti-corruption watchdog Maka Angola and recently spoke with AllAfrica about conditions in Angola. He says the nation is undergoing a process of commercialization as a substitute for democratization.

It came to light this week that several large banks in the United States are imposing restrictions on the Angolan embassy, as well as several other foreign embassies. Questionable practices appear to be at least part of the impetus for this action. You have reported a great deal on Angola's financial dealings - what is your response to the banks' action?

It's important to guarantee that the Angolan embassy is able to operate in the U.S., but also it's important that the Angolans themselves make the necessary adjustment for official accounts not to be used by private businesses or for private businesses. That is not the intention of having official accounts, to engage in the transfer of illicit funds from the central bank or from any other Angolan institution to the pockets of government officials.

It's important that a solution is found for the Angolan embassy to be able to operate because it's here representing every Angolan. At the same time it's important that Angolans become aware that state institutions cannot continue to be used with impunity as the private property of Angolan government officials. There should be very strong sanctions against officials who have tried to use embassy accounts for private purposes.

You say press freedom is suffering in Angola and that journalists, including yourself, are subjected to threats and harassment. Can you elaborate?

The threat against journalists has increased to levels seen only during times of war, especially 1996, 1997 and 1998 when a number of journalists were killed.

In my case I [recently] left Luanda, the capital, to do reporting on human rights abuses in the northeastern part of the country, over 700 kilometers away. I only told my family where I was going. After having driven over 600 kilometers the police stopped me and knew exactly the time I had left home because I had had a car breakdown along the way, which took me several hours to fix.

The police were upset because I had arrived late. They were waiting for me to arrest me and the officer was quite blunt about this: "We've been waiting for you for a long time to arrest you on grounds that you cannot proceed to do your work."

He called the boss and after some consultations with whomever gave the order [upon which] I was released. Along the way, 30 minutes after the police [detained] me, there was an ambush with armed men. We were very lucky because the standoff went on for two or three minutes. Another truck came from behind this car that was blocking the road and they had to move the car to allow the truck to pass. The fact that there were witnesses around the truck defused the whole situation.

And getting into Cuango, the diamond area, where I was driving to, there was another checkpoint and we were stopped. So it was just a trip of harassment to put it in a nutshell.

Why do you think they wanted to arrest you?

The man said these are instructions from Luanda. But that is not the jurisdiction of Luanda police because I had left Luanda, and if there was an arrest warrant they would have served me with a warrant at home.

So it means it was not a legally binding operation. For the order to be issued, it was not about the traffic police asking for car papers. The man knew my name when I stopped and the man said, "I am here to arrest you and you are late."

How would you characterize the current period in Angola?

It is a period in which the government claims to have made great strides in terms of economic growth and in terms of making the benchmarks of democracy, and [responding to] all the pressure put there by the international community.

The reality shows the opposite: less freedom of press than during the war, less democracy, no demonstrations are allowed, people are not allowed to freely exercise their rights.

And economically, government officials in their private capacity have built some very tall buildings, which look very impressive, but those do not account for the infrastructure that the country needs. In a city like Luanda, for instance, basic sanitation is a major problem.

They have not delivered on their promises and what they're supposed to do to ensure that the country is moving in the right direction.

Unemployment is extremely high in the capital. Rough statistics put it at over 40 percent. So half of the adult population does not have formal employment.

It's a situation where Angola is presented abroad as a bright spotlight of economic growth and peacemaking and all those nice things, when the reality is that of not sharing in the dividends of peace and the resources that the country provides.

This year's Ibrahim Index of African Governance shows Angola as making improvement in its governance performance scores. Would you agree with this assessment?

I have read the report and I think it's misguided. It does not reflect what is really happening.

It has become very clear that government officials are privatizing most of the state assets to themselves. They are setting up what seem to be legitimate business ventures but they trample on all the Angolan legislation that forbids government officials to do business with the state for personal profit.

When Angolan companies are being awarded shares, those companies belong to government officials in the diamond business, telecom sector, and all the privatization is benefitting a small elite that now is basically owning the country.

How about opposition Unita party - would you say that its members are enjoying the same benefits you speak of or have they been shut out?

Those members of Unita who joined the government [after the peace agreement] followed in the footsteps of their ruling party colleagues, which was to take advantage of the system to enrich themselves. That further weakened Unita's ability to unite as an opposition force and be a viable alternative for the country.

Unita is not able to come together and be coherent in its strategy to raise issues concerning the rule of the country. If they make more efforts like Unita members in the countryside [they can] get killed easily without national or international outcry. So Unita is basically also a force that is effectively controlled by the ruling party through the means of violence.

Is there any viable opposition to the ruling party?

For there to be a viable opposition there has to be an environment of democracy that enables parties to operate freely, to hold demonstrations. At the moment there is no [such] environment.

As an example, the government, through proxy companies set up by state security, has purchased independent newspapers that were a driving force for free speech in the country. The reason why these newspapers had to cave in - the takeover happened in June - was because for two years the government has been drying up advertisements for these newspapers and ensuring that production costs are hiked up due to control of the printing press. So we have a situation in which now there's less press freedom that we had let's say at the height of war in 1999.

What needs to change? Aren't there supposed to be elections on the horizon?

The constitution was changed earlier this year to basically eliminate presidential elections, which were supposed to be held in 2009 after the legislative elections in 2008. We no longer have presidential elections.

The first name on the list of the winning party, in the legislative elections, automatically becomes the president, which means the president is neither elected by parliament nor by the people. It's an administrative election that enables [President Jose Eduardo] dos Santos to easily appoint a replacement of his liking without having to submit his choice of successor to public scrutiny or even to ruling party scrutiny, which can mean his son or anyone of his liking.

It is unique. There is no other constitution in the world that has such an electoral system to elect the president, which is not an actual election. Basically what the MPR [ruling Popular Revolutionary Movement] regime has been doing is to tick off the benchmarks of democracy and market economy set by the West to make a mockery of state institutions, of democracy, and basically appropriate these legitimate concepts and pervert them.

You are currently visiting in the United States. Do you feel safe going back to Angola? What is next?

For me the next step is to go back home because I have no other choice.

I am not an asylum seeker and I want a different outcome for my country.

And as a citizen it is my duty in my very humble capacity as a journalist and an opinion maker, who sometimes does work on human rights, to raise awareness on the current reality of Angola, and live there and face the consequences as most ordinary Angolans face on a daily basis. It is my country as well and I should not feel pushed out by anyone because constitutionally I am as Angolan as the president or any of the members of the ruling elite.

Source: http://allafrica.com