Angola’s Dos Santos slams corruption

LUANDA – Angola’s president Jose Eduardo Dos Santos on Saturday called for ‘zero tolerance’ of corruption within the country’s government to halt what he said was the ‘squandering of resources.’

Dos Santos, who has been president of the oil-rich African nation for 30 years, was addressing members of the central committee of the ruling Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola, ahead of the party’s sixth congress in December.’The transparency of management actions and good governance are an aspect where there is still much work to do… The best is to commit ourselves to a kind of ‘zero tolerance’ after the sixth congress,’ Dos Santos said.He said the party had been ‘timid’ in holding officials to account through the courts and parliament and this had been ‘exploited by irresponsible people and by people of bad faith’ to allow the ‘squandering of resources.’Dos Santos’ comments come after the publication last week of Transparency International’s annual corruption index in which Angola fell from 158th in 2008 to 162nd out of the 180 countries listed. The index measures the degree to which the countries are perceived to be corrupt.Angola vies with Nigeria as Africa’s largest oil producer but two-thirds of the population live on less than two dollars a day and more than half of people have no access to sanitation. – Nampa-Sapa