The SJC wants judges to push their togas

It is the door through which influences and corruption, independence and the rule of law pbad.

We could not fight to create a possibility, even minimal, of democratic control of the prosecution (and we left to protest). But in judging self-government, we have accomplished a great deal, at least in terms of regulation. In the courts, unprecedented democratization has been introduced to resolve all administrative issues.

The Bulgarian judge was able to choose directly his representatives in his chamber of the Supreme Council of the Judiciary (with one less than members appointed to political positions). He was also able to participate in the decisions of the SJC in a system of subsidiary commissions (including career and discipline issues). The general bademblies of the judges of the courts have been transformed into an important governing body and have been given the opportunity to circulate a candidacy for the presidency of the court. By limiting the detachment, the judges were relieved of the risk of having the boss's justice, which with a signature could "postpone" them. After a long struggle, a new business distribution software was put in place, preventing the presidents from choosing the judge who will decide which case. Unlike all other officials, the property status checks and conflicts of interest of the judges were transferred to a judicial authority (the SJC Inspectorate).

How is self-government used today?

The elections for a new committee of the SJC judges' panel were won by the Nomenclature and the Communist Party. With few exceptions, no reformer went to the new council. In less than two years, this college has managed to conceal its impersonal to strike or erase each element of self-government:

– general meetings are more and more restricted to boring formalities in the validation of the decisions of the "boss";

– committees are marginalized;

– the feudal practices of detaching judges (instead of regular and timely competitions) have been restored;

– the correct use of the business distribution software is not controlled and, when the president of the court of appeal of Sofia distributes a lot of money and that she is bound at the CWB, she is fully protected at the expense of the judge who alerted her to this scandal;

– The SJC and its inspection services not only oppose the unconstitutional transfer of magistrates' checks to Plamen-Georgieva CPKONPI and the active use of this stick against the judges, but also participate in the crushing of the only judge who has the courage to oppose it. – Lozan Panov;

– The SJC has actively contributed to the creation of a parallel system of retaliation ("spec.") And has not reacted to the attacks of Tsatsarov and Plamen Georgiev against the court of the city of Sofia.

– with total pbadivity, the SJC also welcomes the long public inquiry against the Pannis family, conducted in full synchro from the penguin clubs in the media and state institutions, and is now preparing to participate in the coup d'etat unconstitutional against the president of the Supreme Court.

– Finally, it should also be mentioned how the National Institute of Justice has been transformed into a kennel of mediocrity and genius …

Now, with the choice of a paratrooper for the president of the Sofia City Court, the CJS arrogantly ignores the will of the majority of the judges of the court for which they support the presidency.

Alexey Trifonov was elected president of the Sofia City Court yesterday, although the judges voted more than twice for his opponent.

It is a complete strike against the Sofia City Court, which has always been a hotbed of resistance and incongruity, and is therefore hated by the party of nomenclature and conjuncture. The SJC shows judges forgetting any form of self-government, pushing their togos (with all the money needed to dress) and returning to listening and career development at the mercy of the hierarchy.

And on top of all this, the majority of the SJC is slow to watch Lozan Panov why he called it so and even hinted that the EC report is a shame for the Commission and the idea of the EU in the name of the personal interests of several cynical politicians in Brussels.

I remember a discussion of our proposals for amendments to the law on the judicial system with the judges of the Plovdiv district appeal. He and Lozan Panov talked about the importance of introducing the autonomous government of judges. We had to be hot and funny. There was an irritating irritation in the room. They spoke mainly of "administrative chiefs" who protested against the very idea of ​​depriving them of their power: an apprentice of Tsatsarov even exclaimed: "But how am I going to be a leader?"

I remembered the speeches of two "ordinary" judges: a woman who asks us with emotion not to let the judges together, because they will be blocked, and a very young man who reads with stumbling lobotomic scholars. the beloved of "Bulgarian legal thought" tertip). Then, outside, in the mask and the rolls of the pistol, the young man explained how his hand had been handed to the entrance by the respective "administrative director", with unconditional instruction to speak. Of the same records, which are to say what to "pay attention" …

I had the bad taste of comparing this North Korean scene – that's not what I was talking about, but that's exactly how I felt.

There is no particular surprise in these developments of self-government. We have never expected the quick results of the structural reforms with which we fought. They are only a prerequisite, a necessary but insufficient condition for the profound mentalities to have a truly independent tribunal.

And now, we have a judicial system that too often carries a miniaturization mentality and a heavy Stockholm collective syndrome on the bosses and the very idea of ​​a hierarchy to go back in the hope of recognizing you and you " raise. "

Freedom and independence can not be given, they can only be recovered. This is true for us all: one autumn evening, 30 years ago, a wall in Berlin "fell". But too many Stalinist spurs in our head remain intact today. The independent Bulgarian judge as a systemic standard will not be the result of the publication of standards in the Official Journal or of outside help, but only of the (re) expression of the collective interprofessional philosophy.

But unlike any other citizen, judges have a specificity. The audience room is a special place. There, the "abstract norm" of law meets its specific "recipients": living bodies, living souls and becoming destiny. The destiny of the individual, but also the judgment of our entire community, our republic. The court is the deepest cosmogony of its essence.

The judge is every day between this hammer and this human anvil, working with his conscience and serving the law as a pledge of humanity. And maybe that's why some of the brightest heroes of civil awakening in the years of our democracy are just judges. I will not give examples – you know their names. What you may not know is that there are more like them. That is why, when several judges appeared in the Judiciary Chamber and the SJC building with their clothes to defend the independence of the judiciary, it was a European precedent and an opportunity for all of us to be proud of to be part of the Bulgarian Republic.

I think the path of freedom is long and winding. But freedom calls, it is contagious: today, our judges risk losing the hard-won normative possibilities of self-government, but the burden of the future independence of the judiciary is already borne by all. of the Bulgarian judicial system.

For us, as a community of democratic citizens of the republic, to defend the face of judicial autonomy, it is the duty of our own freedom and human dignity, to continue the long struggle for a genuine independence of the judicial system and not to reconcile it. In the name of his own hopes of a free and democratic state under a just law for all.

And hope, as the poet says, is "right".

Hristo Ivanov, facebook