Lawyers’ group attacks selection of new top judges

TIRANA, Sep. 20 – Albania’s Chamber of Advocates, the country’s main lawyer organization, has openly attacked President Bamir Topi for not selecting the best people for the vacant posts of the Constitutional and Supreme courts.
The judiciary has been a constant Achille’s heel in post-communist Albania during the last two decades, being accused of corruption and lack of professionalism.
At a time when the country hopes to join the European Union, raising the level of professionalism in the justice system becomes an imperative.
Topi started his term as president with the nomination of new judges for the Supreme Court. His candidates were often turned down by the parliament’s governing Democratic Party lawmakers even though Topi used to be the party’s deputy chairman.
The same could happen this year.
At this moment he has decreed four new people to posts for the Constitutional Court and three for the Supreme Court.
Now the parliament will first consider and check their professional and moral credibility in an eight-week period, and then they will be voted on.
But it seems that the new names have left many dissatisfied. That includes the governing Democrats who have been in constant friction with Topi, who heads the High Council of Justice, and is in charge of nominating judges at all levels, and may also check the professional work of the judiciary.
But what the attorneys say in their statement leaves room for doubt.
“We cannot accept that representatives of the high constitutional institutions directly responsible and committed to the judiciary’s activity behave in an irresponsible way and contrary to its interests,” the statement said.
The attorneys say that the nominations based on clannish interest lead to a process of nomination that is based on illegal grounds. They add that the process being followed by the president in their nomination has abandoned the criteria of “honesty, professionalism and professional career.”
They said the president had not followed the formal, professional, and moral criteria in a transparent and rigorous way.
They referred to the fact that the president called a Consulting Group to select the criteria for the new candidates.
“We are sorry to notice that such a process was abandoned by the President of the Republic being deformed in a demagogic show resulting in non-inclusion in the list of candidates of the personalities in the field of justice,” the organization’s statement said. “That Šcreated a dangerous precedent which gave to the citizen only anti-values like lack of capability and corruption. Such a deformed process had a negative impact also in the seriousness of the commitment our country has undertaken for the membership in the European Union structures.”
At the end of their statement, the attorneys called on the “constitutional institutions” to pay close attention to this issue “to make possible the selection of more qualitative candidates.”
They could hardly be more open in their criticism of the president. Now it is up to the political parties to have their say in such a process. Experience has shown that political parties act mostly when there is some political capital to be gained.