“There is no salvation for the judiciary. It is definitely a destroyed system. Independence is completely destroyed, the judiciary has come under political control, and as long as policies do not change in this country, and there is no prospect of it changing, there will be no salvation for the judiciary,” said Branko Peric, the judge of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) in the Plenum, and added:
“Only new policies, a new system of values, strong institutions can make the judiciary a serious system. What we have today is a system without integrity, without results, a system that will be managed, unfortunately, by politics. This is something for which no one offers a solution. And these laws that we have are good but we lack common sense and an honest relationship. “
“There are certain cases that are complex, where the capacities of prosecutors’ offices are questionable, but there are also cases where everything is very clean, for which there is documentation and which can be carried out very quickly. But, there is absolutely no will for them. I believe that the problem is the enormous discretion that prosecutors have. Whether they will launch an investigation or not. They don’t even have to explain too much when they issue orders not to conduct an investigation and the like or if they hold cases for very long. So, precisely because of the absolute lack of responsibility, we have all this, it is possible for certain cases to be blocked in this way and through politics, and certain cases to be initiated through politics. I think that prosecutor’s offices are actually something that must be absolutely reformed, both through the legal framework and through the mechanisms of accountability and control. The Office of the Disciplinary Prosecutor can initiate a huge number of proceedings with the best intention, but the problem is that after the decision-making process, three stages through the commissions which are influenced by the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC), you come to sanctions that are public warnings, and where only the initials of those people are placed. So they are absolutely ineffective, regardless of the number of procedures. Sanctions through disciplinary proceedings are also ineffective because even in the appointment process, this is not taken into account, “ stated the executive director of Transparency International BiH, Ivana Korajlic, Federalna writes.
E.Dz.
