Three bills from the local government legislative package enter Parliament today, namely the long-awaited Law on the Institutionalization of Local Authorities

New Newspaper

April 1, 2024 at 09:49

The three proposed laws, considered by the Council of Ministers last week, join the other eleven already presented to the National Assembly for the institutionalization of local authorities.

The first steps towards establishing local authorities in Angola were taken in August 2019, by the National Assembly, with the unanimous approval of two Laws from the Local Legislative Package.

These are the Organic Law on the Organization and Functioning of Local Authorities and the Law on Administrative Guardianship over Local Authorities.

The first defines the way local authorities are organized and operated, with a view to institutionalization as a way of materializing administrative decentralization, while the other aims to create legal instruments to grant the Executive powers of control over local authorities.

The proposed Law on the Institutionalization of Local Authorities, which entered the previous legislature, and had already been generally approved, did not reach the final global vote during the 2017/2022 legislature, which caused it to expire as the legislature progressed. “.

The proposal must be returned to the National Assembly, through the office of the president of the National Assembly through a legislative initiative by the President of the Republic as Holder of the Executive Power, deputies or parliamentary groups in light of article 167 of the Constitution of the Republic of Angola “.

The most controversial of the proposed laws in the municipal legislative package provides for the gradual implementation of the local authority process.

The MPLA/Executive defends that gradualism is geographical, holding elections only in the most prepared municipalities, leaving the least prepared regions for a later phase, while the opposition rejects this approach, demanding that local elections take place throughout the country, admitting that gradualism be it with regard to the responsibilities assigned to municipalities, leaving the more complex tasks for later on those less prepared.