site.btaPresident Plevneliev Decrees Appointment of Lozan Panov as Supreme Court of Cassation President

President Plevneliev Decrees
Appointment of Lozan Panov as
Supreme Court of Cassation President


Sofia, February 3 (BTA) - After a meeting with Lozan Panov, who
has been elected President of the Supreme Court of Cassation
(SCC) by the Supreme Judicial Council (SJC), Bulgarian President
Rosen Plevneliev decreed Panov's appointment to the post, the
head of State's Press Secretariat said on Tuesday.

Panov said at the meeting that, in his capacity as head of the
Court, he will stand up for the principle of judicial
independence because this is the root cause of mistrust of the
system. Panov also clearly committed himself to working actively
for the continued reform of the judicial system as envisaged in
the strategy adopted by the National Assembly.

"The President and his team followed the entire SCC president
election procedure. Non-governmental organizations, magistrates
and all SJC members had an opportunity to take a stand, to raise
their questions and to get answers. The nominations were made
public months before the SJC elected a SCC president. During
that period, all stakeholders were able to express their
position," the press release reads. "Throughout the procedure
and to date, no arguments or facts were disclosed calling into
question either candidate's professionalism and integrity.
Criticism was only levelled at the procedure itself, but not
regarding the accomplishments of any of the two candidates."

"The Constitution of the Republic of Bulgaria confers on the
President and the SJC a shared competence upon a first motion
for the appointment of a SCC President, which is the case now.
This shared competence, however, does not imply that the
President can usurp the SJC's determining role and refuse the
appointment without any arguments whatsoever," the press release
says.

Under the Constitution, the Presidents of the Supreme Court of
Cassation and of the Supreme Administrative Court and the
Prosecutor General are appointed and removed by the President of
the Republic on a motion by the Supreme Judicial Council. The
President may not refuse to decree any such appointment or
dismissal on a second motion.

"Regarding the procedure, it must be recalled that the election
at the SJC is conducted by a small number of people and
organizing a method for the election of a candidate by
electronic means or by paper ballots should not present any
problem. From this perspective, there were no obstacles for the
SJC to reckon with the public expectations and with Judge
Panov's public appeal and to organize the election in a manner
ruling out all doubts about the independence of the vote of each
one of the Council members. This would have resulted in a far
higher credit of confidence in the elected candidate and in the
judicial system as a whole. Nevertheless, the head of State does
not consider it right to refuse an appointment on the sole
grounds of unproven hypotheses," the President's Press
Secretariat said.

On January 29, the SJC elected Panov SCC President by the
required minimum of 17 votes despite the support of nearly 1,000
judges for the other candidate, Pavlina Panova, who has a
longer experience as a judge, serves currently as SCC Vice
President, and is an internationally recognized jurist expert in
human rights protection.

On Monday the Bulgarian Judges Association and five NGOs called
on Plevneliev to hold public consultations before decreeing or
refusing to decree Panov's appointment. The civil society
organizations called into question the secrecy of the ballot at
the SJC and whether the two candidates were given a level
playing field. They also cited the European Commission's
Technical Report under the Cooperation and Verification
Mechanism, released on January 28, as saying that "the concern
has been that it is in practice possible to see how other [SJC}
Members are voting. In addition, the [electronic voting ] system
itself apparently has never been subjected to an external IT
audit ensuring that in technical terms it is safe from the point
of view of outside interference and monitoring."

On January 30, Bulgarian Justice Minister Hristo Ivanov said he
preferred not to attend the January 29 meeting of the SJC (he is
an ex officio chairman of the Council) because Panov's election
was a "foregone conclusion". PK/LG

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