Filenews 26 May 2022 - by Michalis Hadjivasilis
It does not pass through the House the bill that increases the scales of political jurisdiction of the senior and the district judges, with the aim of clearing cases that are delayed.
There are currently 42,000 civil cases pending in the District Courts and the Ministry of Justice, in consultation with the Supreme Court, has decided to increase the scales of the amounts for which there is a dispute, which can be heard by the lower courts. The issue was discussed yesterday before the Committee of Lawyers of the House, with the majority of the parties and lawyers being against this regulation, calling for comprehensive reform at the lower levels of justice.
The Cyprus Bar Association, in a note, points out that such an arrangement is a patch and poses risks, as difficult cases may be assigned to inexperienced judges. Serious objections were also raised by MPs, who stressed that there was no provision for reform at the lower levels of justice. In her statements after the conclusion of the meeting, the President of the Committee and MP for DISY, Fotini Tsiridou, said that she raised the issue that with the establishment of the Commercial Court, the District Courts and their presidents will be discharged, with large high-scale cases, which have their own complexity". Regarding the reform of justice, she stated that the three bills we have in front of us, we have the view as DISY that they should proceed yesterday". She added that this separation also serves the compliance of the Republic with the recommendations of international organizations, so that the Supreme Constitutional, which will be in the tertiary jurisdiction, will act as an appellate Supreme Judicial Council, which will also review the decisions of the judges of the Supreme Court, thus granting an appeal to judges candidates who wish to challenge any decision of the first instance judicial council, that adversely affects them.
Mrs. Tsiridou noted that the reform is also proceeding in the courts of first instance, with the so-called backlog (cases that are delayed). For this reason, on the initiative of the Minister of Justice, a group was set up with representatives of all political parties, which is studying the modernization of the primary jurisdiction of the District Courts, concluded Mrs. Tsiridou.
AKEL MP Aristos Damianou, spoke about the need to reach a consensus between the Parliament and the Government, in order to bring about a comprehensive reform of the justice system as soon as possible. He also said that in the dialogue that is taking place we must draw on the positive example of the debate on the reform of the Postal Service, and that there should be mutual backtracking in order to find the necessary convergences. "With maximalist attitudes on the part of the rulers and with various communicational treatments and by the Legal Service, in some cases, no consensuses are created." He further added that instead of starting the reform from the primary justice, where the majority of the problems are, it was started from the Supreme.
Concerns were also expressed by the MPs of DIKO Panicos Leonidou and Christiana Erotokritou. Mr. Leonidou stressed that the Ministry of Justice needs to submit a comprehensive proposal, while Mrs. Erotokritou pointed out that we should be concerned about the quality of the justice administered, judging as "bona fide" the effort to regulate, but expressing concerns about the result. EDEK MP Kostis Efstathiou, expressed the view that it is impossible and disastrous not to have a comprehensive regulation.
