The good news for the Bulgarian judicial system is that it will surely solve

its problems and start to serve the interests of people just as well as

judiciaries do in more advanced countries.

The bad news is that 14 years after the start of the transition, it remains

unclear how long it will be before this product of normal democratic society

is delivered. What is more, the latest judgment of the Constitutional Court

on the matter made it clear that this new reform period will take too long.

What did the Constitutional Court rule on 11 April? If you want to redesign

my house, you will have to tear down yours - this was the top judges'

message to the top politicians. In legalese, it said that the structure of

the judiciary, the Constitutional Court itself, the Presidency, and the

Government can be changed only by a Grand National Assembly.

This ruling cemented the inviolability of the judiciary and put a spoke in

the wheels of the judicial reform started by the Simeon II National Movement

(SNM). But this is a lesser problem.

The big problem is that by standing up against the political elite in such a

Jesuit manner, the magistrates actually are drawing it on their side. To be

more precise, they are turning it into a hostage, because what lawmaker will

dare leave his cozy seat in Parliament and take the risk of a Grand National

Assembly? If he tears down his parliamentary home now, he risks being

swallowed whole by Big Bad Wolf, the voter.

The latest opinion polls show shocking trends. The SNM has almost reached

the critical 10-percent mark of approval; the rightwing United Democratic

Forces (UDF) has been there for a long time already, whereas the Bulgarian

Socialist Party (BSP) is headed for 20 percent of approval but has no

interest in early general elections. The important thing for the Reds now is

to win the local elections.

The junior partner in the government coalition, the Movement for Rights and

Freedoms (MRF), will retain its 7-percent approval rating - before or after

possible early parliamentary elections. With the SNM approval rating melting

away like spring thaw, 7 percent is good enough for MRF leader Ahmed Dogan

and gives him enough clout over Prime Minister Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

In other words, the parliamentary forces have no interest in early general

elections. Outside Parliament no political force has enough potential and

resources to make early elections happen and then win them.

The conclusion is that such elections could be provoked only from the

inside, namely by Parliament, with the sole aim of reforming the judicial

system.

No, this end definitely does not justify the means in a politician's eye.

Politicians will not put at risk their own comfort only to disturb that of

the magistracy. The popular anecdote where one redneck says that he does not

want to be well-off himself but rather wants his neighbor to be poor, does

not apply here. The stakes are high and after spending a decade living the

short life of a mayfly, Bulgaria's elite has learnt how to survive.

Politicians have their hands tied and all they can do is snarl at the

judiciary in a poor disguise of helplessness.

A day after the Constitutional Court ruling, Konstantin Penchev said that

it will not halt the judicial reform as enshrined in the declaration of the

political forces. Penchev is deputy leader of the SNM parliamentary group

and member of the parliamentary legal committee.

He would not say how the reform will continue after this final act of

encapsulation of the judiciary - probably because he had no idea. Neither

does Borislav Ralchev, the other SNM deputy floor leader, and a lawyer too.

Summing up the situation, National Assembly Chairman Ognyan Gerdjikov said,

"I would say that as a lawyer I was mildly surprised. But as a politician I

was not. As a lawyer I would take the liberty of expressing my humble

opinion that this Constitutional Court ruling can hardly be justified." This

statement brought no light to the end of the judicial reform tunnel.

The other political forces are even more reserved. And their behavior so far

has brought no promise for a more active position in the future.

In late March UDF leader Nadezhda Mihailova said through her press office

that the reform in the judiciary cannot be discussed without the

participation of magistrates. Earlier on that day she had spoken at the

Palace of Justice with Supreme Court of Cassation President Ivan Grigorov

and of Supreme Administrative Court President Vladislav Slavov. The

participants in the meeting were reportedly "unanimous in the view that the

state and society need a serious judicial reform".

These hollow words imply that the UDF would rather support the magistracy in

a bid to corner its political opponent, the SNM. And why not even

precipitate early general elections, if at some point the electoral

attitudes tips in UDF's favor?

Tatyana Doncheva of the Socialists' Coalition for Bulgaria was more abrupt,

saying a week later that there has been "an alarming merger of business

interests and the judiciary".

"Big business exercises considerable control over the [judicial] system,

including recruitment and routine operations," she said. Apart from being

abrupt, Doncheva's comment was also fair. But it remains to be seen whether

this is the official position of the Coalition for Bulgaria.

Four days later, socialist leader Sergei Stanishev noted that "the exact

place of the prosecution and investigating magistrates in the judicial

system should be pinpointed after a serious analysis of the work of all

investigative bodies in the country". Stanishev believes that dialogue is

lacking between executive, judicial, and legislative powers.

It sounds rather detached, like Nadezhda Mihailova's statements of late

March. The similarity in the rhetoric of the right- and the left-wing

opposition leaders in recent years is not a secret to anybody. In this

particular case it provided the judiciary with a convenient launching ground

for further attacks.

The magistrates now know for sure that their enemy, the politicians, are

disunited enough to give in to their pressure. Meanwhile, law courts across

the country became the target of bomb attacks, or mostly bomb hoaxes. This

served as an artillery barrage prior to the real assault.

Without the backdrop of political scuffles and bomb threats, the scandalous

ruling of the Constitutional Court would have stirred an even bigger

scandal. Its effect has now been diminished by the halo of martyrdom of a

judicial system which has come under a bomb attack and is trying to protect

itself.

The ultimate result has been the conversion of the judiciary into a fortress

which politicians have neither the strength nor the zeal to attack

No one else in the country has the required resources and powers to reform a

judiciary which obviously needs an overhaul.

Only politicians have the requisite resources and powers, but change is

desired mostly by ordinary people. And while the former can make the needed

change happen but don't want to, it is the other way around with the latter.

The question is whether society is really ready for truly radical reforms of

the judiciary. In the latest poll by Alfa Research, 76 percent of the

Bulgarians described as "normal" the contemplated changes in the

Constitution and 67% said resolutely that such amendments were needed most

of all for the reform of the judiciary. Only 3 percent believe that the

judiciary is performing well.

In the same poll, 40 percent agree that an ordinary National Assembly can

revise the Constitution if the revision is limited to the role and powers of

the government institutions, and 30 percent say that this should be done by

a Grand National Assembly.

In other words, more Bulgarians are against the Constitutional Court

judgment, but there are quite a few who support it.

The conclusion is that right now no one can decisively prevent the

magistrates from becoming an untouchable caste.

The magistrates know better than anybody else that they have to be reformed

They no longer respond dramatically to the inevitable loss of some of their

inviolability, which does not mean that they will not try to keep it for as

long as they can.

The result is that nothing is changing - in the high corridors of the

judiciary and in the remotest court of law. The supreme magistrates are

involved in supreme political wheeling and dealing. They have become so good

at this that they get exhilarated by the surgical precision of each new

stratagem of theirs. Mired in these machinations, they have long forgotten

their true mission.

There are places where judges and prosecutors have virtually merged with

businesses and with openly criminal structures. Even though they are at a

low level, they are no less inviolable. Their only effective corrective -

except for the mass media, which is buried in legal proceedings at the

slightest attempt to disclose any inconvenient information - remains the

Supreme Judicial Council, and the Council is not tough enough, to put it

mildly, to the delinquent magistrates.

It will be interesting to look into the Council's decisions to see how often

they have punished fellow magistrates for controversial behavior often

bordering on outright criminal offenses.

There is one reason for this - the Omerta. The vow of silence has turned

into a main principle for the judiciary; stick by the guild and support it

in any circumstance, and all your actions will ultimately be exculpated.

This is also the main reason why the judiciary has got stuck with so many

unsolved cases, deprived thousands of people of justice, and allowed crime

and corruption to acquire unprecedented dimensions.

The worst thing is that a clique in robes - not big but powerful enough, and

clinging to the status quo - is surrounded by hundreds of respectable

judges, prosecutors, and investigators working for it. Many of them are

unhappy to be part of all this but have no choice. When you join the wolves,

you have to howl like one if you don't want to get eaten.

Shock and Awe, or European-style changes. It is obvious that things cannot

go on like this forever. Since there are going to be changes no matter what,

the fight for the magistracy now is to make them as painless as possible,

and to keep the status quo for as long as possible.

Like all other major reforms after 10 November 1989, changes here happen

only under pressure from the outside. Here, two schools of thought clash:

1. The School of Revolution: the US pressure for reforming the Bulgarian

judiciary quickly and radically. The Americans want no time wasted for

embargoes on magistrates to make them come to their senses. Or engage in

long and often meaningless negotiations and other such stuff. They want the

reforms to storm the judicial system like the US troops stormed Iraq, amid

"shock and awe". This was exactly the spirit of the latest US State

Department report on Bulgaria. It was no surprise that Bruce Jackson of the

US Committee for NATO wedded the country's admission to the alliance to

judicial reform. The true threat to democracy in Bulgaria is corruption that

is rampant among the members of Parliament and the judicial system, said

Jackson.

2. The School of Evolution: the reforms in the judiciary prompted by the EU

member-states. The German initiative is the strongest of all, both as far as

the prosecution and the courts of law are concerned. The idea of Western

Europe is that the Bulgarian judiciary can be reformed without major jolts -

through law changes, training or the ousting of the occasional super-corrupt

magistrate.

Which school of thought will take the upper hand?

For ordinary people the American way is the efficient one. It would bring

more effective justice in the nearer future, and a stronger positive effect

on foreign investment too. But it is also harder to carry though.

The second option, the Western European way, is preferred by the magistracy.

It suggests more palliative changes in the longer term, which means a

relatively intact status quo. In the long run, the Bulgarian judiciary will

approach West European standards but it is not clear how long it will take

and what it will cost the country and its citizens.

As the clashes between the two schools of thought become increasingly

frequent, a compromise scenario has started to take shape. Following the

military analogy, it can be likened to the ousting of the Milosevic regime:

Milosevic fell after NATO bombing without the Alliance troops setting foot

in his country.

This scenario seems to be the most realistic for the Bulgarian judiciary. It

will probably be spared a Shock-and-Awe-style campaign but is unlikely to go

without the bombing, which in our case will be external pressure, media

influence, and political action.

The bombing will continue relentlessly until the Bulgarian judiciary becomes

a truly democratic institution and stops serving the interests of oligarchs

or common criminals at the expense of civic interests.