#5
Wall Street Journal
November 20, 2001
In Move to Reform Russia's Judicial System, Putin
Battles Entrenched Vested Interests
By GUY CHAZAN
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
MOSCOW -- Islam Burlakov's body is riddled with 100 pieces of shrapnel from a grenade attack two years ago. He has received death threats and been denounced on state-run television. He says the local governor is out to get him.
Mr. Burlakov is in a dangerous profession, but not of the traditional kind. A judge, Mr. Burlakov says he is being persecuted for refusing to hand down verdicts dictated by the governor, a former general who thinks "everyone is there to carry out his orders."
Mr. Burlakov's case is typical. Poorly paid and overworked, Russia's 20,000 judges are acutely vulnerable to intimidation from regional bosses -- and, legal campaigners say, highly susceptible to bribes. The Russian authorities want to clean things up by improving judges' pay, while making them more accountable. That means removing their immunity from prosecution.
Yet judges say that will only undermine their already fragile independence. "This is a dream come true for the governors," says Mr. Burlakov, the head of a regional supreme court in Russia's North Caucasus. "It allows them to engineer investigations against any judges they don't like," he adds.
Legal Reforms
The bill on the status of judges, up for debate in Russia's lower house of Parliament, or Duma, on Wednesday, is part of a package of legal reforms that have become a centerpiece of Vladimir Putin's presidency. The bills show a leader determined to overhaul some of Russia's most conservative institutions, and face down its most entrenched vested interests in the process.
But his critics say that despite his reputation as a liberal modernizer, Mr. Putin's reforms are all about asserting the supremacy of the state. "The bureaucracy doesn't need an independent judiciary," says Viktor Pokhmelkin, a Duma deputy. "It wants full control over all branches of power," he adds.
Mr. Putin won elections last year promising a "dictatorship of law." In a speech last April, he said police and courts were failing to protect citizens from "racketeers, bandits and bribe-takers." With no faith in the courts, Russians were resorting to "shadow justice," which was "undermining confidence in the state," he said.
It is undermining investment, too. Westerners repeatedly cite Russia's weak legal system as the biggest obstacle to doing business here. Corruption and negligence, they say, mean judgments are often flawed, while fair rulings can be impossible to enforce.
But the prospects for reform are now more real than ever before. After communists lost control of the Duma to pro-Putin parties two years ago, legal innovations that had gathered dust for years were put back on the agenda. Mr. Putin threw his entire political capital behind the reforms and tapped one of his closest aides, Dmitry Kozak, to lead the charge.
Russia's justice system is in crisis: more than one million people are in the country's overcrowded, unsanitary and tuberculosis-ridden prisons. Human-rights groups allege widespread use of torture to extract confessions from crime suspects. Lawyers say prison authorities routinely deny them access to clients, in contravention of Russian law.
What President Putin is trying to do is breathtaking in scope. Socialist justice, centered on the might of the state prosecutor, is to be replaced by a Western-style judicial system based on the rights of the individual. Prosecutors will surrender many of their powers, such as issuing search and arrest warrants, to the courts. Jury trials will be introduced across the country.
Fierce Resistance
Prosecutors reacted by throwing tantrums, storming out of Duma hearings, and ranting in media interviews. No other Kremlin initiative had ever encountered such fierce -- and public -- resistance from a professional body.
Dmitry Kozak was unrepentant. "Judicial reform affects a whole corporation: 20,000 judges, 40,000 prosecutors, 50,000 police investigators," he said. "It's their particular interests, it's their professional duties, it's their material position, it's their status. Naturally these people can't be indifferent to their own fate."
But perhaps the most bitter battle was with the judiciary. The changes on offer were truly radical: courts would be opened up to greater public scrutiny; judicial-appointment boards would include respected public figures and have more powers to monitor judges' performance; judges would be forced to retire at 65, work fixed terms and rotate between different courts.
But by assailing the judiciary's two core values -- security of tenure and immunity from prosecution -- Mr. Kozak stirred up a hornet's nest. Liberal politicians feared his proposals would destroy the fragile independence that judges have clawed back from the state since the end of communism.
"Of course, there are corrupt judges, just as there are corrupt policemen and prosecutors," says Mr. Pokhmelkin, the Duma deputy. "But you don't reform them by punishing them."
Mr. Kozak counters that everyone should be equal before the law. "There can be no diplomatic immunity in Russia for one kind of person," he says.
But the issue quickly degenerated into an ugly standoff, and in the end, Mr. Kozak was forced to compromise. At a tense meeting in the Kremlin two weeks ago, judges persuaded Mr. Putin to tone down the changes. In a crucial concession, prosecutors will now need the consent of the judges' main professional body, as well as the verdict of a higher court, to launch a criminal investigation against a judge.
Mr. Putin says he will spend $1.5 billion (1.7 billion euros) over the next five years on his legal reforms. But observers say it will cost much more than that to cure Russia's demoralized courts.
"You can judge our status by the buildings we work in," says Yuri Sidorenko, a member of the Supreme Court and chairman of Russia's Council of Judges. "Seven hundred courts are housed in former bathhouses, laundries and stables. Real reform would be to finance the construction of new buildings. Instead, they are trying to intimidate judges."
For Mr. Sidorenko, it is a missed opportunity: "Prosecutors are unhappy. Judges are unhappy. Lawyers are unhappy. Some reform."
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