Below are some twilight factors which have contributed to the current status of Bulgarian law enforcement within the last 20 years.
1. The top magistrates of Bulgarian law enforcement are the generation which was brought up, educated and started its career in communist times, almost all of them being communist party members.
2. It is worth recalling that Marxism-Leninism taught that law and court would gradually expire in the transition between high socialism and communism. Ideology saw law as a doomed profession. I.e. not the best youngsters were encouraged to take that track. Communism was to be a non-antagonistic society without sharp disputes.
3. There was a parallel system of internal communist party justice where solutions were enforced without resorting to courts. I.e. institutional justice was not crucial.
4. Montesquieu’s division of powers was totally rejected by Marxism-Leninism. Power was one and united and it all belonged to the communist party. Law enforcement was just one of the extensions/functions of the united party power. Law graduates were carefully examined on this issue. Today they understand it as judicial shareholding in united power.
5. An important element in the current self-confidence of the Bulgarian comrades is the conviction that they have not been defeated on their national ground, they have only been strategically betrayed. They consider themselves unfair victims of world events and by no means a turned page of history. Hence the vigor to stay in power.
6. Before 1990 Bulgaria had just one law faculty. In the mid 1990s they became 11 (eleven) pumping out low quality staff into the system which soon realized its corruption potential. They are still 11 faculties today. It is a locusts invasion.
7. When in 1991 the new Constitution was adopted, the Grand National assembly passed a handful of extremely important laws of constitutional relevance- Trade act, Foreign Investments, Protection of competition AND The new Law on the Bar. MPs were interested to join the bar after quitting parliament so they introduced a free registration regime by law graduates to become bar members. This “open doors policy” soon resulted into a “no walls policy”. The profession was turned into a dumping ground for failed politicians, former judges, prosecutors and policemеn- like a legal refugee camp. Only after 2004 meaningful entry exams were re-introduced but it will take a generation to clean the system.
8. The two instances of courts were replaced by a three instance court system BUT justice was regionalized into five appeal court areas. Then the third instance (supreme court) was made discretional which resulted in regional appeal courts having the final say. That soon deteriorated into regional appeal court specifics in implementing the law giving rise to the jargon: Tarnovo Law of Contract, Plovdiv Procedure, Sofia Penalty code, Varna Trade act etc. Supreme court has no physical and some times mental capacity to coordinate. Hence justice standards are critically fragmented.
The two new procedure codes (civil and criminal) adopted in 2006 and 2007 simply released top judiciary from 50 years of precedent decisions which loosed them free to introduce “novelties”.
9.The influx of new EU laws overwhelmed the system with regulations and directives that are hard to follow by magistrates, not to speak of the administration.
On the other hand crucial material laws of communist time still make the skeleton of legislation. The basic civil laws were drafted b/n 1948-1952 whereas the Penalty code is of 1968.
10. Unlike other countries with similar problems Bulgaria does not have a strong church to promote basic biblical values and virtues among the population as a substitute to institutional law enforcement and integrity. No major theological study in the Orthodox bookshop for many years.
THE REFORM OF BULGARIAN LAW ENFORCEMENT CAN HARDLY COME
FROM THE MAIN CONSUMERS OF ITS IMPERFECTIONS.
July 2013 Valentin Braykov