Africa-Press – Angola. The introduction in the new Angolan legal system of the figure of itinerant judge raised this Monday (2), in Luanda, heated debates between deputies and members of the Commission for the Reform of Justice and Law.
MPLA deputies João Pinto and Virgílio Tyova were the most active during the joint meeting, in the specialty, which has been evaluating since yesterday the Organic Law Proposal on the Organization and Functioning of Courts of Common Jurisdiction.
“I have some allergy to the term itinerant judge”, declared deputy João Pinto, warning that this figure should not call into question the principle of the immobility of the natural judge.
João Pinto devalued the idea expressed in the new wording of the diploma, to establish a period of four months for itinerant judges to resolve cases “stranded” in the courts and districts.
“The judge must have stability. When he has a period of four months to resolve certain cases, how is his independence?”, questioned the parliamentarian.
Virgilio Tyova asked how the traveling judges will perform (in groups or individually). He also expressed doubts about the number of traveling judges needed to cover all regions of the country.
“I don’t know if there will be so many itinerant judges to implement their rotation regime”, said the deputy, for whom the nature of this figure is not resolved with the new wording proposed in the diploma.
In the context of procedural celerity, the jurist Raul Araújo defended the creation of a computer system that determines the average decision time of a case by the judges. He recalled that civil cases in the Courts of First Instance take, on average, about ten years to be decided, while in the Supreme Court they last five.
The jurist therefore defended urgent measures to resolve the delay in court proceedings. He stressed that, when the problem of procedural celerity in the various courts is resolved, there will be no need to keep itinerant judges in office.
Raul Araújo said that the Organic Law Proposal on the Organization and Functioning of Courts of Common Jurisdiction should not benefit judges with a reduced number of cases, to the detriment of those who work. He therefore appealed to the Council of the Judiciary to demand more responsibility for procedural celerity in the different courts and districts.
The judge embargator Jesus Flávio, from the Justice and Law Reform Commission, reassured the deputies by stating that the regime that is sought to establish with the figure of itinerant judge will not establish a new category of judges, nor institute a court or judge ” adhoc” for predetermined causes.
He justified the emergence of the figure of itinerant judge by the State’s inability to recruit judges, according to the procedural demand in the country. “We decided to assign the designation to the figure of itinerant judge, in order to make it more perceptible to the reality of the country”, he said.
“Itinerant judge is not a category of judge that will be established in the country. It is the designation that makes up a group of judges who are called to intervene in an exceptional way and, temporarily, in a situation of normal delay of excessive pendency”, he clarified.
With the institution of the figure of itinerant judge, he said, it is also intended to establish the purpose of the intervention of this working group.
Jesus Flávio informed that, from now on, the judges will have a referential number of cases to receive, but he stressed that none should be rejected by the courts, despite the limit established for their reception. “When all judges in a court or district exceed the reception threshold, cases must continue to be distributed equitably,” he said.
He pointed out the specialty, proximity and rotation as the fundamental principles that obey the designation of itinerant judges.
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