The National Board of Justice swore in its seventh member this week, finally completing the requisite number to begin its work after stops and starts over several months.
The Justice board is a new and improved version of the Magistrates Council, created by congressional approval last year as a result of one of President Vizcarra’s justice reform proposals. Its duties include proposing judicial reforms and appointing judges and prosecutors as well as the heads of the national elections office and national identification registry.
The Magistrates Council had become overrun by members chosen through backroom dealings, compounding the corruption undermining key areas not only of the justice system but the institutions in charge of general and regional elections.
The selection system has been changed now to ensure a more transparent selection of the candidates. Yet even so, questions arose earlier this month on two candidates because of their possible connections to former supreme court Justice Cesar Hinostroza, currently facing an extradition trial in Madrid on charges of heading a network of corrupt judges. One candidate, Maria Zavala, provided a satisfactory disclaimer, and the second was replaced by the seventh member, Guillermo Thornberry.
“We are now in a position to fully deploy our constitutional and legal competencies and attributions,” said Aldo Vasquez, president of the new justice board. “We ask the country to trust that we will act always with rigorous impartiality and commitment.” Vasquez served as minister of Justice and Human Rights in the final year of the Humala administration.
According to Vasquez, the justice board will spend the next 180 days reviewing 2299 cases ruled on by the now defunct Magistrates Council regarding appointments, ratifications and disciplinary processes of judges and prosecutors.
“Let us hope the Justice Board will see the Chavarry case,” said Diego Garcia-Sayan, a justice on the Inter-American Court of Human Rights and former minister of Justice and of Foreign Relations.
Justice Pedro Chavarry, Attorney General until recently, has been allegedly involved in a series of questionable court rulings and actions but was shielded by the now-dissolved Congress, which refused to lift his immunity for investigations. This past week, a year after a complaint was filed, the Lima Bar Association finally suspended Chavarry’s membership for 18 months. The decision comes late, according to Garcia-Sayan, and will have few repercussions unless the Justice Board takes steps.
