The justice sector reform is a slow process that will last for several years. Selecting the judges who will form part of the Superior Council of Magistracy is the first step. The judges of the system will start to be assessed later, said programs coordinator of WatchDog.md Community Valeriu Pașa. According to the expert, the assessment of the integrity and professionalism of judges and prosecutors will take several years, IPN reports.

The current government opted for a slow process of assessment and reeducation of judges. “Personally, I believe in this process with difficulty,” stated the expert.

“The reform is not a result, but is a process. The result should be that several judges and prosecutors will go to jail. Immunity for abuse should no longer exist or nothing will change. The people should find justice in the Republic of Moldova and should be sure that there is justice, starting from simple things. Such situations when the clerk comes and says that the hearing was put off for two hours and you come and are told that the sentence was passed in your absence should be excluded,” the programs coordinator of WatchDog.md Valeriu Pașa said in an interview with IPN.

He said that not only the judges will go through a verification process, but also the prosecutors and the fears that there will be a shortage of prosecutors as a result are not justified.

“There are over 200 persons who graduated from the National Institute of Justice in the specialty of prosecutor and they weren’t admitted into the prosecution service at a time when they have free positions. Most of these people were not accepted namely because they are upright and cannot be blackmailed at once,” stated Valeriu Pașa.

According to the expert of WatchDog.md Community, the cases that are covered by the media at present do not have any value and were started strictly for a show.

“I think that the first convictions in ordinary courts in properly handled cases will come next year, while definitive convictions with all the stages covered, together with the SCJ, possibly in 2024. The system of prosecutors received the first blow somehow by these reform intentions. Many put up resistance, mimicked and pretended that they support the government and supposedly deliver results. They started some irrelevant cases, like the cases against Stoianoglo, or these cases would have been in court long ago and things would have moved on. The cases started recently against Igor Dodon, or at least a part of them, are inconsistent. Joining four counts into one case… is not right. It looks like incompetence or sabotage. I think this is sabotage,” said Valeriu Pașa.

The interview titled “Justice Sector Reform in Theory and Practice” was produced by IPN News Agency in the framework of the project “Support for justice sector reform through multimedia coverage of relevant cases of alleged injustice”.