Politicians Pre-Approval of Judicial Appointments Unacceptable
Justice Minister Ibrahim Najjar praised the recently completed judicial appointments, which, he said “were finally adopted after a long wait.”
After meeting with a committee responsible for modernizing Lebanon’s laws on Thursday, Najjar said, the completion of the judicial appointments meant three stages had been crossed. The first stage, he said, was filling the vacancies of the Supreme Judicial Council, the second was separating the appointments from judicial inspection and the third was related to the judicial appointment procedure.
Najjar also lauded President Michel Sleiman’s "supportive attitude,” and the courageousness of the Bar Association’s in Beirut and Tripoli that repeatedly called for the end of discrepancy among judicial authorities.
Najjar said that those who requested prominent politicians approve the appointments before they were issued was “unacceptable,” adding, “How can we respect the Supreme Judicial Council’s independence this way?”
He said he hoped the appointments would pave the way for the completion of major reforms during the “next phase,” a reference to the period after the upcoming elections, and for the implementation of the 2002 sanctions’ law, which stated sanctions be shortened when the conditions stipulated by the law were present.