At least half of the judges, prosecutors and lawyers admit that confidence in justice is low, but the majority tries to shift the blame from the own system onto objective factors. A survey conducted among the three categories of representatives of the justice system shows that the low confidence is due to the illegal decisions taken by judges, politicians’ attacks and the level of confidence in the legislative and executive branches. The poll was carried out and presented by the Legal Resources Center from Moldova, IPN reports.
Vladislav Gribincea, director of the Center’s Justice Program, said the respondents were asked to mention the reasons why public confidence in justice is low, being at the level of 2021. The three categories formulated equivalent opinions to the response “confidence in justice is related to confidence in the other branches (legislative and executive), which discredited themselves” – 68% of the prosecutors, 75% of the judges and 62% of the lawyers.
There was a difference between opinions when the low confidence was motivated by politicians’ attacks to justice. More exactly, half of the lawyers do not believe in this, while the prosecutors and judges are inclined to invoke these attacks as the reason for the distrust in justice.
More than half of the judges agree that the low confidence is due to the fact that some of the judges take illegal decisions and this fact influences the opinion about the whole system. 2/3 of the prosecutors and 90% of the lawyers agree with this assertion.
“So, the judges, prosecutors and lawyers admit that there is a problem in this regard – there are illegal decisions that affect confidence in the whole system. Everyone admits that confidence in justice is low, but try to blame something else, except the own system, mentioning objective factors rather than issues imputable to the own profession. I think this is something subjective. We always try to embellish the situation in our systems,” stated Vladislav Gribincea.
The participants in the poll were also asked about their perception of the level of corruption and a part of them said that there is no corruption in Moldova – 12% of the judges, 7% of the prosecutors, and 3% of the lawyers. Also, 33% of the judges, 43% of the prosecutors and 64% of the lawyers consider there is a lot of corruption in the country. “What are these figures confirmed by? Primarily by the fact that one third of the judges or 4 in 10 prosecutors and 2/3 of the lawyers consider that there is a lot of corruption in Moldova. These figures confirm that corruption is still a serious problem for the Republic of Moldova and those from the system admit this,” explained the Center’s chairman Ilie Chirtoacă.
The poll also shows the legal professions consider that the level of corruption is higher, but in other professions that in those of which they form part. In this regard, there were mentioned such institutions as the Government, Parliament and the National Anticorruption Center. “It is surprising that the three categories said that in their professions, the level of corruption is lower than at the Presidential Office, which, according to the Public Opinion Barometer, is the institution with the lowest level of corruption. These figures confirm that there is corruption and the legal professions admit to the presence of this phenomenon, but consider that it is present wider in other professions that their own,” noted Ilie Chirtoacă.
Ruslan Sintsov, director of the Centre of Sociological, Politological and Psychological Analysis and Investigations (CIVIS), said the poll covered a general sample of 604 respondents – 128 judges, 253 prosecutors and 223 lawyers. The respondents completed online by themselves the questionnaire through an individualized link (70% of the interviews) combined with phone interviews (30%).
The survey was conducted in April-June 2023.
