The Palace of Justice uprising confirms the desire to run the “Republic”

Beyond any technical debate over the salary issue, let us look at this matter in the political relationship that powers build with the constitutional altar.

The reasoning — which to me is an alibi — of the justice system is: let’s wait for the Constitutional Court, and then we can talk at the table.

First, the table is not a table for drinking a few courtesy coffees, but a table that is in itself political — a table which, called by Rama with malice or sincerity, is unavoidable to join. For a simple fact: he represents the executive, the majority, and above all, it is the government that has politically pushed the Justice Reform. When you say “we are for the table, but let’s wait for the Constitutional Court,” there is a contradiction here. It amounts to a kind of hypocrisy, which builds, in a way, stubbornness and arrogance from the independence granted by Parliament itself.

Second, if the Constitutional Court confirms the justice side is right, justice will walk in with the brochure in hand and say: “We are the winners,” while dialogue will lack the will and be served imposition.

Third, there are two alibis. There is the alibi that Rama, through this move, is pressuring justice — and on the other hand, there is the alibi that justice itself is building the narrative of a power that can influence or even override the executive.

The first alibi doesn’t hold much ground, I think — that Rama is pressuring justice — since, unlike any other landscape, justice is under monitoring and is a direct condition set by the internationals for entering the European Union. This is as clear and as glaring at the same time as the setting sun.

As for the second, in my view, its alibi carries a truth about a simple fact, from this act of refusal.

Refusal, in every respect, has nothing to do with the Constitutional Republic. In a constitutional republic, justice, for whatever reason, would have to sit down with those who hold the instrument of political will through the mechanism that elections provide.

Justice, in every change of its own, would have to take the power of the people and the mandates in Parliament. Judges are not a political party; they are an independent power, not a self-determining power. In this respect, their refusal builds a premise much talked about lately, that of the Republic of “Judges and Prosecutors.”

This refusal is harmful. It is as harmful as when politics once disregarded the needs of justice and deformed it.

Above all, sometimes banal acts also reveal the deviation that stems from the desire to have the Republic. It suffices to recall the case of the Administrative Court, which returned an answer on salaries within 48 hours, while more than 10,000 files sleep in drawers still unanswered — rulings that resolve the lives of people and families. This clearly shows that acting with double standards is a desire to dominate, not to get the right that belongs to you.

A justice system that leaves the ungranted right as a burden and, in the blink of an eye, grants itself the right, is nothing more and nothing less than arbitrary.