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SARAJEVO, January 23 (FENA) - Deputies in the House of Peoples of the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina today rejected the Work Reports of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC) for 2017 and 2018, and during the debate, the deputies mostly pointed to numerous problems in the BiH judiciary in general.
A deputy from the Serb caucus Mladen Bosić (Serb Democratic Party - SDS) called for greater scrutiny in the judiciary to ensure that they are not under the control of politics or other interest groups.
The abuse of the judiciary has been greater than in other areas, and he recalled that the House of Representatives had a special session in 2018, and was then tasked with adopting a new HJPC law within two months, but that did not happen and nobody did anything about it.
“This means that there is no political will to resolve the situation in the judiciary,” he said, assessing that the judiciary is convincingly the biggest problem in BiH, and believes that there is no chance for BiH to have a better and more advanced system until something changes with the judiciary.
Deputy Speaker of the House, Bakir Izetbegović emphasized that an impartial and independent judiciary is something BiH needs desperately, and that judges and prosecutors must be persons of unquestionable integrity and confidence, but that this is not what we currently have in BiH.
He also brought to focus the national representation in judicial institutions, asking how it was possible that there are no competent persons from certain nations to be appointed to these positions, pointing to the complete lack of Bosniak representatives in leadership positions in state judicial institutions.
A deputy from the Croat caucus Zlatko Miletić (Democratic Front - DF) said that security agencies spend about 220 million KM annually, but statistics on the number of resolved cases are not satisfactory.
“I cannot understand that our judicial system cannot solve the murders of two young men, David Dragičević and Dženan Memić. We must come up with mechanisms to positively influence you work,” he said, addressing HJPC President Tegeltija.
Miletić and other deputies also asked whether the HJPC is working on drafting a new law on the HJPC or are they doing so in cooperation with the Ministry of Justice.
After the debate, HJPC President Milan Tegeltija, who has been in office for the past six years, addressed the matter, saying that everything should be discussed because responsibility is on the HJPC and him as the head of that institution, but also on the parliaments and the executive power.
He believes that only in partnership can the system be improved, saying that “the judiciary is far from perfect and that there is room for improvement.”
“The budget of the Court of BiH is by far the largest compared to the other courts, the working conditions are at European level, and the courts in the entities operate under worse conditions and deal with civil and administrative matters and have a much larger number of cases, while the Court of BiH deals with more complex cases,” he explained.
Responding to questions on the revision of the HJPC Law, he recalled that in 2017 an initiative was submitted to amend the law, changes were also envisaged in terms of accountability but stressed that ultimately the law is to be passed by the parliament.
He said that the relationship between the judiciary and the police was one of the most important and, at the same time, the biggest problem at the moment is criminal prosecution and fight against corruption and organized crime, saying that this link has been weakened and the blame was on both sides.
(FENA) S. R.
