Algeria judiciary’s uncertain future
The maintenance of a state of emergency since 1992, in defiance of the constitution and Algeria’s human rights obligations, complicates matters further. The emergency gives wide-ranging powers to the administration and the police with no counterweight guaranteeing respect for judicial norms. Adding scope for corruption, according to sociologist Lahouari Addi, is the rise in the price of oil, which ‘has sharpened the appetite of those billionaires who corrupt state employees, members of the security services and law officers to get what they want, offering not dinars but thousands of euros’.5
Signs of an Algiers spring? In September 2004, parliament passed a new institutional law defining the status of judges and law officers after a long period of stalling.6 According to the authorities, the purpose was to strengthen judges’ independence by ensuring the financial autonomy of the CSM, which will also take charge of judges’ training and their retirement packages. CSM decisions must still be endorsed by the president and the Minister of Justice, however. This body will only be truly independent when the involvement of the executive is limited, all its members are elected and there is transparency in its functions and decision making.7
The CSM only achieved real independence for three years from 1989 to 1992. In 1989 a law granted decision-making powers to the commission, which was made up mainly of judges and law officers elected by their peers. After the state of emergency was declared in 1992, elections ceased, parliament was dissolved, the president resigned, violence began and the number of elected members on the CSM diminished, reducing its autonomy. That same year an executive decree reworked the Law on the Status of Judges and Law Officers, drastically curbing the CSM’s powers, and the rights of judges and law officers.8 The authorities justified the step by pointing to the political instability affecting the country. From 1992 to 1999, the CSM met rarely. In 2006 the CSM’s composition underwent ‘a minor revolution’ after which the number of elected magistrates was once again in a majority, to the detriment of the government representatives.9 As part of the 2004 reforms, the government increased judges’ salaries to help them avoid the temptations of corruption. Nevertheless, a judge’s monthly salary is the equivalent of only US $720 in dinars, lower than the average for judges in Morocco and Tunisia. It also published a new statute setting out their rights. Article 29 introduced security of tenure, which judges now enjoy after 10 years of service. Under the same provision,
5 Le Monde-diplomatique (France), April 2006. 6 Liberté (Algeria), 13 June 2004. 7 The National Union of Judges (SNM) considers that executive decree 05/92 (see note below) gave rise ‘to a whole range of anomalies and inconsistencies, from arbitrariness in the decision-making process to settlements of old scores, including bizarre accusations against judges and law officers which gravely impugned their honour and dignity, and sometimes involved their suspension on the basis of spurious and mostly non-existent grounds’. From SNM’s contribution to the preparation of the Law on the Status of Judges and Law Officers in 1998. 8 Executive decree 05/92 of 24 October 1992 conferred on the Minister of Justice the powers to appoint and grant tenure to judges and law officers that were previously the prerogative of the CSM. Membership of the CSM was reduced to 17, of whom only six were judges and law officers elected by their peers. Even counting the two judges and law officers who are ex-officio members (chief presiding judge and state prosecutor to the Supreme Court), judges and law officers were in the minority. Four key figures appointed by the president joined CSM: the head of the civil service and three directors from the Justice Ministry. 9 In accordance with institutional law no. 04-12 of 6 September 2004, the CSM now contains 10 elected judges and law officers, while the president can appoint six people of his choice. To these are added the chief presiding judge and the state prosecutor of the Supreme Court, who are ex-officio members.
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