BRATISLAVA, January 21, (WEBNOVINY) –The For Open Judiciary independent initiative of judges has dismissed criticism of Chairman of the Judicial Council Stefan Harabin who is discontent that no member of the Council was invited to the Friday’s conference of the Open Society Foundation called Judicial Reform – Past and Future. “The For Open Judiciary initiative has been critical of the operation of the Judicial Council in its original composition in the long run and considers it one of the reasons of the current situation in the judiciary, which we are attempting to change. Because of these reasons we did not consider the Judicial Council a partner for this kind of conference,” said judge Katarina Javorcikova, a member of the Open Judiciary initiative.
Supreme Court President and head of the Judicial Council, former Justice Minister Stefan Harabin (nominated by LS-HZDS) feels overlooked because neither him nor any other representative of the Judicial Council of Slovakia was invited to the conference. „I fully understand that they did not invite anyone who has a different opinion, because they could hear the truth and real life examples, which is difficult. It’s actually a conference of future political and totalitarian court officials,“ said Harabin.
In reality, three members of the Judicial Council are taking part at the conference. They are Ida Hanzelova and two newly appointed members, Jozef Vozar and Ludmila Babjakova. The new members however were not invited as members of the council. According to the organizers, objective of the conference is to describe the situation and „to diagnose the current state of the judiciary“ in the Visegrad Group region, define the causes of problems and find solutions towards an open and independent judiciary.
SITA