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Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,
On May 30, Bulgaria's Sofia City Court welcomed a new Chair, Vladimira Yaneva. She won in a second-round 18-to-5 vote against the runner-up, Velichka Tzanova, pitching a mediocre concept paper for the reform of the court, a scant four years of experience as a judge and a family friendship with Bulgarian Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov against the other three contenders. Sofia City Court, the biggest district court in Bulgaria, handles cases of crucial importance for Bulgaria's economic and political life. The judicial body suffers from an immense workload, resulting in substantial trial delays and a load of bad press.
Catch the tiger by the toe.
The contested election unleashed a domino effect of mass resignations of senior judges and members of the Supreme Judicial Council (VSS), who vocally questioned the impartiality of the appointing authority. The ensuing hysterical media zoom on VSS corroded its credibility, causing the Union of Judges in Bulgaria, the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee and whistleblowing website bivol.bg to campaign for a self-initiated breakup of the command center of the country's judiciary.
If it hollers let him go,
Yaneva's appointment was irreparably tarnished when she was found to have deliberately delayed a criminal case against the former management of Sofia municipal real estate company Sofiyiski Imoti. Despite the ban on magistrates engaging in commercial activities, Yaneva was revealed to have bought properties from Sofiyski Imoti as a proxy for her father. The VSS Inspectorate identified four breaches in Yaneva's work on the Sofikyski Imoti case but stopped short of a conflict-of-interest (COI) probe due to lack of authorization. Yaneva's hearing was postponed by a month through sickness certification, which, however, did not prevent her from attending the christening ceremony of Interior Minister's youngest daughter. After the COI commission at the Supreme Judicial Council listened to Yaneva's testimony in a hushed-up session, the matter was referred to the Central Commission for the Establishment and Prevention of Conflict of Interest, allegedly the only body authorized to conduct the inspection, which is not yet operational.
Eeny, meeny, miny, Yaneva, you are it!
Yaneva's appointment has been appealed by the other key contender, Tzanova, and its legitimacy will be decided in the fall of 2011. Yaneva has said that she could consider tendering a resignation only after the ruling and would step down in view of "the shift in circumstances" and in total disregard of the widely publicized suspicions of impartiality.
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