/ world today news/ The changes to the constitution voted in the first reading by the parliament are discriminatory. This was announced by the chairman of the Supreme Administrative Court (SAC) Georgi Kolev at a seminar with journalists in Lozenets.
Specifically, the discrimination is in the rule after the division of the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC) into two collegiums that the judiciary is chaired only by the head of the Supreme Court of Cassation (SCC), explained Kolev, quoted by “Legal World”. “The presidents of the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court are absolutely equal. That’s why I think that the regulation is absolutely discriminatory,” he said categorically. He also proposed a way out – to write in the basic law that the chairmanship of the collegium of judges should be on a rotating basis, i.e. both the head of the Supreme Court and the head of the Supreme Court will be at the helm. This opinion was also expressed at a meeting with the representatives of the European Commission, who were in our country in connection with the monitoring report on Bulgaria.
“It is not about me personally, but about the position of the chairman of the SAC. Personally, I believe that the changes, if adopted, will affect the next SJC, i.e. they will not affect me personally in any way, because my mandate expires after two years,” said Kolev. He also drew his own plans for the future. “After the expiration of the two years I have left, I will not be in the judiciary. So far, there is no president of the supreme court or chief prosecutor who has remained in the system,” he said. But he did not answer the question to which field he will transfer. “We continue to claim that the proposed constitutional changes are within the powers of the Grand National Assembly only,” Georgi Kolev also stated. But since the Constitutional Court rejected as inadmissible the questioning of MPs about the proposed amendments, “we will put aside this discussion for now”, he said.
But he still commented on the other changes. Personally, Kolev supported the expansion of the powers of the Inspectorate. The project of changes to the basic law envisages that in the future inspectors will carry out integrity and conflict of interest checks of magistrates. But even here the chairman of the Supreme Court has objections. “At the moment, attempts are being made to legally constitute the so-called anti-corruption bureau. The question is whether the magistrates will fall within the scope of its inspections. If so, they will be subjected to an unacceptable dual regime – two different bodies inspecting them for one and the same thing,” stated Georgi Kolev. According to him, only the Inspectorate should have such powers vis-à-vis judges, prosecutors and investigators. During the discussion of the draft amendments to the Law on Judiciary in Appellate Districts, the judges raised the same question. At that time, the Minister of Justice Hristo Ivanov explained that the magistrates would not be checked under the anti-corruption law, but only under the Criminal Procedure Code.
Regarding the rest of the changes, Kolev has mostly objections. Thus, for example, according to him, the division of the SJC could allow majorities of non-magistrates to decide the career fate of judges, prosecutors and investigators in our country. Illustrate it with an example. “There are no requirements for those elected from the parliamentary quota. Theoretically, the National Assembly can only send lawyers to the SJC. At the same time, the collegiums will make their decisions with a majority of those present. And if a part of the representatives of the judges or prosecutors are missing at a given meeting, it could the decisions should be taken by the majority of the lawyers”, explained Georgi Kolev. According to him, the absurdity can be avoided by writing specific requirements to the representatives of the parliament in the SJC. At the same time, however, if the constitution stipulates that in the future these can only be magistrates, this would lead to encapsulation of the system, which would be “very dangerous”, according to the chairman of the Supreme Court. Kolev also said that the appointment of administrative heads of all ranks should be done by the plenary session of the SJC and not by individual colleges.
He was categorical that the secret vote in personnel decisions of the SJC should be preserved. Although the proposal to make this vote explicit was crossed out in the edited draft voted on in the first reading by the parliament, MPs from the Reform Bloc have already submitted proposals for this rule to be enshrined in the basic law. However, according to Georgi Kolev, it is quite debatable whether such proposals are acceptable at all, since they leave the “initial framework”. The Chairman of the Supreme Court also made it clear that, in his opinion, the introduction of proposals between the first and second reading should be carried out by at least 60 deputies. I.e. to apply the general rule that proposals for constitutional changes can be made by a minimum of 1/4 of the elected representatives. According to Georgi Kolev, the constitutional changes can be finally adopted no earlier than February 2015. And the changes in the judicial law will happen “only in June-July next year”.
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