A call to review the Supreme Judicial Council’s structure [Archives:2008/1119/Opinion]
By: Khalid Abduallah Al-Jamra
Despite regularity of its meetings, the Supreme Judicial Council is still unable to touch upon the real situation in courts and prosecutions in an effective manner. The main reason behind such a limitation is that the most prominent judicial authorities seem to be far away from the appropriately required performance.
Noticeably, the SJC General Secretariat demonstrates a modest level of performance, mainly as the secretariat doesn't contain all the council's administrative components in its specializations. Numerous are the council's departments that failed to make use of the available contents, e.g. the administrations for judicature members' affairs and oversight, plus office of the Secretary-General, which is supposed to lead the active administrative work. Currently, these administrations are only engaged in marginal works that have nothing to do with people's affairs and issues.
Additionally, the council experiences incomplete administrative structures like the ones related to its secretariat, and public relations, legal affairs and database departments, which the council mostly relies on, to collect the required data about judicature members. The council can then make use of these data while enacting its legislations and resolutions, specifically the ones associating with the transfer and appointment of judges and prosecutors, withdrawing judicial immunity from them and holding them to account.
Additionally, we should not ignore the official and main role of the Judicial Inspection Authority in this respect, which the council must not dispense with.
The dynamics we hope to take place within SJC originates from the fact that dynamism is key to implementing the required judicial reforms, particularly as the most recent presidential initiative laid more emphasis on reforming the judicial system. So, the relevant authorities have to accelerate utilizing the jurisdictions delegated to them before they expire. Expiry of such jurisdictions is an expected matter, taking into consideration that they are based on trust of relevant people at the current SJC, starting with its chairman and then the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General. These officials are primarily responsible for carrying out the prospective judicial reforms.
These officials are also required to reform SJC administrative system and then let the council exercise all its jurisdictions in accordance with the constitution that stipulates independence of the judicial authority. This can not be achieved unless the council has strong administrative personalities to work according to a joint responsibility and partnership. No new employees occupying oversight, financial and statistical posts can perceive and understand the real nature of the judicial authority's business immediately after they join the council.
The situation necessitates qualified and experienced staff to occupy considerable posts in the Ministry of Justice and Public Prosecution. Experienced staff should be given precedence over new employees who still need a longer period of time to know about the nature of work in the judicial system.
It is illogical for the updated information center in the Ministry of Justice to lack the qualified technical staff because the center is supposed to have gained experience during the long time period since it was established. It has so far produced many effectively technical pieces including a legal encyclopedia, in addition to a mechanism connecting some of the specialized courts with a unified internal system and organizing extensive computer training courses for judicial sector servants, among them the SJC Secretary-General and other senior workers.
In order to ensure a fair distribution of judicial reforms over all the judiciary organs, all those concerned have to draw closer attention to the nature of administrative work at the various organs and support them with the necessary decisions and viewpoints to bridge the persisting gaps. This should be done, based on the concept that success or failure of the judicial system is the responsibility of everyone.
Source: Al-Sahwa.net.
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[archive-e:1119-v:15-y:2008-d:2008-01-10-p:opinion]
