Thus, among the most notable actions is the amendment of a set of laws regarding the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ), which, in addition to reforming the court, also provide that some decisions of the supreme court will not necessarily be binding on the Pre-Vetting Commission. The changes were approved in the Parliament session of March 30 – 31, 2023.
a amendment in this sense was submitted by the president of the Legal Commission, Appointments and Immunities, Olesea Stamate. According to him, “findings from irrevocable court decisions are binding on the External Evaluation Commission, except for decisions that the evaluation commission considers arbitrary or manifestly unreasonable.”
At the same time, another amendment approved by the Parliament refers to the granting of the right to the Superior Council of the Magistracy (CSM) to temporarily transfer, by way of derogation from the legislation in force, judges from the lower courts to the SCJ to judge the trials on the roll, until the occupation of the 11 positions of magistrates at the supreme court.
At the same time, on Friday, March 31, the Commission for Exceptional Situations (CSE) approved a provision by which it ordered the suspension of judges’ resignations, with the aim of preventing an institutional deadlock within the SCJ. Regarding this decision, including some judges claim that the act would be null and void, since the resignation requests have entered into force.
Lawyer Cristina Ciubotaru states, in a post published on social networks, that the CSE’s provision only prolonged the deadlock, since it is not clear who must continue examining appeals against the decision of the Pre-vetting Commission. At the same time, it claims that the magistrates who submitted their resignations refuse to undertake the continuation of the examination process.
Advertising Through the RIDICULOUS DECISION of the CSE to suspend the resignation of the magistrates from the CSJ, resignations that had already been accepted and communicated, a NEW BLOCK was created. At the moment, it is not clear who should continue examining appeals against the decisions of the Pre-vetting Commission: the previous composition of the panel, or the one formed after the resignation of some magistrates?! Obviously, the judges of the SCJ forced to perform forced labor, prohibited by art. 44 of the Constitution of the Republic of Moldova, consider themselves entitled not to comply and to contest, and until the courts are exposed to the legality of the CSE’s defiance – the examination of these appeals is stopped.
Author: Cristina Ciubotaru, lawyer
The program director of the Promo-LEX Association, Vadim Vieru, told AGORA that a cause of the current situation is the lack of sufficient communication between the government and the judges.
The judiciary and the executive are two powers in the state that must communicate. At the moment, let’s say so, they are on the barricades, and this deepens the problem even more, starting from the CSJ and so on. The decision of the CSE is a very strange one and is practically not legally argued. Given that the administrative act cannot be suspended, and until the decision of the CSE, it has exhausted its effect. It is a decision out of place for her
Author: Vadim Vieru, program director of the Promo-LEX Association
On the other hand, the political analyst, Ion Tăbîrță, told AGORA that the current blockage in the justice system is a reaction of the judges to the results of the evaluation carried out by the Pre-vetting Commission and an attempt by them to preserve the current state of affairs in the judiciary.
“When the justice reform process started, the system somehow didn’t react to these attempts, went into anticipation and tried to preserve itself. As later, when the first results of the pre-vetting began to arrive, the judges in the system began to have the reaction to block this reform, as the government wants to go further, maybe to the legal limit, I don’t think it’s desperation, we can’t qualify as such.
Author: Ion Tăbîrță, political analyst
In his opinion, Tăbîrță claims that at the same time, the government understood the need to act, after about a year and a half since it won the elections. At the same time, unlike the Prosecutor’s Office system, where there are certain disputes between various camps, for and against the reform, regarding the judicial system, the situation is different, or all the groups are apparently opposed to the reform.
If there are certain disputes between the clans in the Prosecutor’s Office system and some of them have gone over to the side of the government or vice versa, we see this dispute, with the hope that this fight will lead to a certain cleansing to allow people to come to reform the Prosecutor’s Office system. In the case of the judicial system, we did not have these disputes, and even if we had certain groups, they united against the current government, hence they preferred to keep the external state of things. Obviously, it would be good to get involved in reforming the system, but we see that they are not involved. We see that 80% of those evaluated did not pass the evaluation. I do not come with estimates that 80% are not honest and in such a serious situation, I am sure and I want to believe that more than 20% are honest.
Author: Ion Tăbîrță, political analyst
