For Rui Ferreira, the expanded framework of powers and competences of the President of the Republic, in the light of the Constitution of the Republic of Angola (CRA), approved in 2010 and revised in 2021, is also included in what he calls "problem fields" of the supreme law.
According to the retired judge, the mechanisms of balance of powers and the scope of competence of the National Assembly (parliament) to carry out parliamentary supervision of the executive's activity are also part of the "problem" of the CRA.
"The evolution of Angolan constitutionalism" was the subject of an exhibition made this Wednesday by Rui Ferreira during a major conference on the "Supremacy of the Constitution and Constitutional Justice", alluding to the 12th anniversary of the CRA, approved on 5 February of 2010.
Rui Ferreira's intervention focused on a historical incursion, from the Constitutional Law of 1991, the Draft Constitution of 2004, to the approval of the CRA in 2010 and the revision of the constitutional text in 2021, at the request of the President.
The ex-president of the Supreme Court, who resigned in 2019, also pointed out the "range of effectiveness of instruments to guarantee and protect the fundamental rights of citizens, especially in the event of a threat or violation of these rights", as "issues problems" of the CRA.
Also included in the "problem fields" of the 2010 CRA, "the mechanisms for implementing and guaranteeing the separation between the judiciary and the bodies of political power, and the independence and exemption of the courts and judges in the exercise of their functions".
He pointed to the "constitutionalization of some mechanisms that expand the constitutional range of instruments for parliamentary oversight of governance, the universality of the vote with the extension to the outside of the country and the independence of the Angolan central bank" as a "constitutional evolution" of the 2021 revision. .
Memory, Current Affairs and the Future of the Constitution of Angola is the theme of the conference that brings together, in the capital, legal experts and other guests.
Rui Ferreira also said that in 1991 Angola experienced a "constitutional rupture caused by the constitutional revision of 1991, which put an end to the post-independence revolutionary period", introducing the country "on the path of modern constitutionalism committed to building the democratic rule of law, in the recognition and protection of fundamental human rights".
The former president of the TC also considered that the constitutional revision of 1992, the CRA of 2010 and the constitutional revision of 2021 "configure exercises/situations of evolution of Angolan constitutionalism".
"It is an unquestionable fact that Angola today has a modern Constitution, aligned with the universal standards of democratic constitutionalism and capable of leading the country to comply with the program of the Constitution. This program is the building and consolidation of a true democratic state of law", concluded the retired judge.
The presiding judge of the TC, Laurinda Cardoso, stated, at the opening of the conference, that Angolan constitutionalism "has gone through several metamorphoses that have marked our history, with the great evolutionary leap taking place in February 2010".
"The Constitution of any State is not only an instrument that defines the legal status of political power. It is, above all, a project of society that defines the political, social, economic and cultural aspirations of its people", argued the judge.
