His position was expressed during the Conference on the Organization of the State in Angola, an initiative of the UFOLO Center for Studies for Good Governance, when he addressed the theme "A Constitution Beyond the Transition and a Transition Beyond the Constitution", included in the panel on "The Constitution and Current Political Challenges".
"Many people think that, in 2027, all UNITA [National Union for the Total Independence of Angola] will have to do is win the elections and a transition will be made and everything will be resolved", warned the lawyer and professor at the University of Oxford and the University of Paris Cité.
Rui Verde said he had doubts that this would be the case, considering structural issues, that is, "the lack of experience in alternation situations in Angola, the existence of intertwined interests with family clans and the entire history of past hostility".
"I have doubts that this mere electoral transition is possible", he declared.
The academic stressed that the transition in Angola cannot be based solely on existing legal and constitutional mechanisms, but "a broad consensus must be sought, involving defence and security forces, civil society, churches, possible third parties, economic forces, knowing that everyone has to give in a little, to make sacrifices and build consensus".
Drawing a parallel to what happened in Spain, during the transition process, with the succession of dictator Francisco Franco to King Juan Carlos, the jurist stressed that "law is not enough, constitutional norms are not enough, political reality must be brought together for any movement to be successful".
According to Rui Verde, in Spain, the transition managed to combine politics and law.
"They called in the communists, the socialists, but at the same time, as they were part of the regime, they guaranteed the loyalty of the military, the security forces, the elites and managed to bring everyone together with the aim of creating a democracy in Spain and a market economy, while at the same time pushing back the reactionary attempts to which the military and security forces were linked, because they swore loyalty, but they also pushed back the more radical attempts at change", he explained.
For this reason, he said he does not believe that the transition in Angola "is purely and simply about making a change, simply for the sake of another party's electoral victory. It will always be a fictitious change or one that will generate a lot of turmoil or confusion".
"The new leadership, which will emerge from the congresses of UNITA and MPLA [Popular Movement for the Liberation of Angola], must have a sense of future historical responsibility, of creating a pact for future generations", he added.
For Rui Verde, only after "this political process can we think about a national constituent convention, the new Constitution that many people talk about, which generates an agreed Constitution subject to referendum, which finally meets the expectations of the people".
According to Rui Verde, Angola has been a country in transition since 1975, the year of its independence, and the last transition began in 2017, with the President, João Lourenço, trying to encourage an internal transition, "that is, within the regime itself, within the system itself, to implement a new transition".
"João Lourenço's attempt accelerated history. Today's MPLA is not the same as in 2017, international relations are not the same as in 2017, society, the economy, everything has accelerated, everything has changed, everything is in a great turmoil. There has been an acceleration of history", he considered.
Rui Verde stressed that, with this acceleration of history in the world, in the country "all the facts that were taken for granted in the last ten years are no longer true".
"Currently, Angola's best friend seems to be no longer China, it will be the USA, and it seems that the MPLA is no longer invincible, and may even lose the next elections", he argued.
