Sandu: Authorities Try to Subordinate Justice to Political Interests

The Party of Action and Solidarity (PAS) accused the Dodon government of "total discredit of justice reform and attempts to subordinate justice to political interests." This statement was made by its leader Maia Sandu at a press conference on Monday. According to her, "the measures proposed in the current reform concept and the draft law are very different from those promoted by the former government," infotag.md reports. “First of all, it concerns the replacement of the judiciary external assessment with an internal one, by returning to those mechanisms that have proved to be ineffective. And the assessment of prosecutors is not implied at all. Secondly, the evaluation mechanism will be under political control. I recall that we insisted on external audits by professional and incorruptible experts, involved mainly from abroad. This was the only way to clean the system. Now the government is pushing for a simple procedure that will be carried out by the system representatives. But for many years we have seen in practice that this does not allow us to get rid of corruption in the judicial system,” the politician believes. According to her, “this mechanism can be used against those judges who do not meet political preferences” of the authorities. “The assessment will be carried out by a panel of judges, subordinate to the Supreme Council of Magistracy (SCM), formed on the basis of existing structures. And through the legal commission of parliament, politicians will control appointments to this panel. The main risk is that Dodon, thanks to the work of such an evaluation mechanism, will be able to get rid of judges who do not want to play by his rules,” Sandu said.