Malanje - The director of the Non-Government Organization (NGO) Democracy Works Foundation (DWF) for Angola, Augusto Santana, on Friday in Malanje Province, defended the continuous training of social actors and institutions on Local Elections, with the aim of preparing citizens to support and actively participate in the implementation and experience of the process in the country.
He was speaking at the end of the workshop on Local Elections, which took place in that city and brought together 25 journalists from the provinces of Malanje, Uíge, Cuanza-Norte and Lunda-Sul.
The official believes that, as this is a new issue for the country, it is very useful to constantly train people, especially media professionals, so that they can deal more fairly with matters relating to local elections and clear up doubts about the process.
With regard to the implementation of this elections in the country, he said it was a question of time, although the most important thing was not the date, but the quality of the process, pointing out that at Southern African Development Community (SADC) level there had been processes that had been hastily prepared and ended in situations that were not very favourable.
“We are concerned with creating conditions so that the elections are of good quality, reflect the aspirations of the people and ensure that Angola remains peaceful and continues on the road to development,” he added.
To him, local elections should serve as a way to meet people's needs, instead of being just instruments for agreements between political parties.
The workshop lasted two days and was held within the scope of the Civic Education Project for Local Elections (PEEL), developed by DW since 2023.
Its purpose was to prepare media professionals, taking into account the challenges imposed by local elections, to be implemented in the country and addressed topics such as organization and functioning of local authorities, administrative supervision, status of local elected officials, inter elections cooperation, comparative framework the centralized and decentralized model, electoral cycle, role of the media in electoral processes, among others.
The Democracy Works Foundation (DWF) is a regional organization with an office in South Africa and representations in Botswana, Lesotho, Malawi, Zambia and Angola. It has been in the last two countries since 2020. ACC/NC/PBC/MRA
