Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights and Civil Development Forum decided to observe this precedential process by establishing a project of “Civil Monitoring of Candidates for the Public Prosecutor General Office” (“Obywatelski Monitoring Kandydatów na Prokuratora Generalnego”).
Legal and factual background
In October 2009, the Polish Parliament revised the Act on Public Prosecution of 20 June 1985 – a main document formulating tasks of public prosecuting authorities in Poland. The most important provision of the adopted amendment was a separation of institutions of Minister of Justice and Public Prosecutor General. These two offices, considered crucial for administration of justice in Poland, were combined since 1989. Throughout the two decades, the concept of Minister of Justice holding a position the Public Prosecutor General raised many concerns with regard to an alleged political pressure influencing professional activities of prosecutors.
Under the new law, the Public Prosecutor General is appointed for a six-year term in elections which are open virtually to every judge or prosecutor meeting the eligibility criteria such as relevant professional experience. What is more, the future Public Prosecutor General must not be a member of any political party or trade union and must not conduct any public activity colliding with his office. That is why the new law is believed to strengthen impartiality and apolitical character of the Office. As a consequence, Public Prosecutor may become one of the most important persons in the State and his election may have a great impact on the future shape of public prosecution authorities in Poland.
Project overview
Taking into consideration a significance of the first elections of Public Prosecutor General, who will exercise his power independently from the executive, Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights in collaboration with Civil Development Forum decided to carry out a project of “Civil Monitoring of Candidates for the Public Prosecutor’s Office”.
We believed the elections of Public Prosecution General should constitute a fully transparent process, based on objective evaluation of candidates’ skills, competences and experience. Moreover, we intended to initiate a public debate over the elections and encourage more active involvement of lawyers, academics and NGO’s specialized in the field.
As a crucial part of the Monitoring we considered gathering information on registered candidates and exposing them to public through internet website of the Project. The website can be found at www.hfhr.org.pl/prokurator. Furthermore, we prepared detailed questionnaires for the candidates and invited them to share both biographical information as well as ideas and plans concerning the future Public Prosecutor’s General Office. We observed public hearings before National Justice Board (NBJ) and organized additional debate between the two final candidates selected by this body. We considered the debate necessary, as contrarily to the public hearings before NJB, it enabled members of the audience to address questions directly to the candidates so they could actively participate in a discussion. The debate was attended by many academics, prosecutors, advocates and high level officials, including the Minister of Justice and the Commissioner for Civil Rights Protection (Ombudsman).
Process of election, final results
The elections of Public Prosecutor General took place in two stages. In the first stage two candidates were selected by National Justice Board, after public hearings. NJB supported two candidates- a judge Andrzej Seremet and Edward Zalewski (who is a current National Public Prosecutor, deputy Public Prosecutor General). In the second stage, the choice of a final candidate was subject to a directional decision of the President of Poland.
Altogether, 16 candidates submitted their applications: 11 prosecutors and 5 judges. However, most of the applicants seemed in fact anonymous to the public opinion. Media complained that none of the Supreme Court judges had applied for the position. Therefore we found it very important when it turned out that the vast majority of candidates were willing to cooperate with our Project. 9 out of 16 candidates thoroughly completed received questionnaires (and additional 2 applicants provided less detailed information), which we believe helped public opinion to find out more about their views and biographies. Furthermore, the questionnaires were widely discussed in the media and many questions we had asked – came up several times during the public hearings before NJB.
President Lech Kaczynski eventually nominated Andrzej Seremet – an Appeal Court Judge from Krakow, previously also delegated for several months to the Supreme Court and a lawyer with an outstanding professional record and basically no political background. In the course of elections, Judge A. Seremet delivered a very good speech during the public hearings and obtained recommendations from various prosecutors’ professional associations. Also the fact that the first independent Public Prosecutor General Office will be exercised by a judge – a man from outside the prosecutor’s world, who is believed to take independent decisions “by nature” – may be in fact considered as a virtue.
Certainly, election for the position of Public Prosecutor General means a great challenge. In particular because – as many candidates underlined during public hearings before NJB – numerous mechanisms existing within public prosecution at the moment are inefficient and need to be urgently remedied. Among envisaged reforms Andrzej Seremet mentions: incorporating the provisions concerning public prosecution into the Polish Constitution, resolving the problem of lengthiness of preparatory proceedings and overuse of temporary imprisonment as well as improvement of the prosecutors’ employment conditions.
Overall, the Monitoring team is satisfied with the process and outcome of the elections. It needs to be underlined though, that the objective of our Project was never a final evaluation of candidates’ competences. Our aim was limited to reliably present registered applications in a transparent and detailed way. Nevertheless, we hope our initiative has at least slightly contributed to the election of the best available candidate.
Dorota Głowacka, Monitoring Coordinator
