Romanian president says low trust in justice system means “we are all doing something wrong”
During a meeting on Tuesday, September 1, with the new permanent magistrates who graduated from the National Institute of Magistracy, Romanian president Nicuşor Dan said that people’s trust in the justice system is a major indicator for effective government.
The head of state argued that only a quarter of Romanians trust the justice system at present. “The justice service is public (..) and the most important indicator is people’s trust in the justice system. And if trust is, as it is today, at 25%, it means that all of us, together, are doing something wrong and there is something that all of us together must correct,” the head of state told the new magistrates.
At the same time, Romania will have to balance politics and justice, he noted. “First it was the political side that neglected (the balance), after which excesses also occurred from the other side; I am referring especially to the area of salaries, and after that, most seriously, a campaign of blaming the entire professional body began. And this, obviously, is not healthy for either side,” Nicuşor Dan also said.
He also spoke of the “good faith” that could “arrange all these individual good intentions into a system that works.”
Earlier this year, the head of state appointed seven head prosecutors and deputy head prosecutors and rejected only one of the eight nominees sent by the Social Democrat (PSD) justice minister Radu Marinescu. The appointments were broadly seen as a concession made to Social Democrats and a gesture that would put an end to hopes for more active investigations into high-level corruption cases.
Since then, no major corruption cases have been unveiled.
The president tackled this aspect as well in the speech before the graduating magistrates. He said he is currently waiting for 6 months to pass since the appointment of the chief prosecutors. “The impression is that activity has become more dynamic. Let’s look at the figures. One good thing is that we have separated criminal investigations from television. The fact that important documents from important cases no longer reach the public domain through sources is a step forward,” the president said.
(Photo source: presidency.ro)
