A few days ago, regarding yet another mishmash of justice related to wiretapping in Operation Influencer, revealed by DN, I was told that this was further proof that judges, prosecutors and magistrates “walk free”, without any own or external entity monitoring their activity. I am not of that opinion and I really believe that it is a bad principle to think about restricting, in some way, the independence that the rules of the Rule of Law grant them. Even with all the recent and past controversies, the judiciary must have room and freedom to work.
This does not mean, firstly, that I think everything is fine with the functioning of justice in Portugal. It is not. The existence of mega-processes that drag on for a decade; the pendency of court cases, especially administrative courts; the “revolving doors” between large law firms and parliamentary groups and governments; The absence of a body specifically dedicated to corruption and white-collar crimes (as exists in Spain) are issues of concern and should receive greater attention from civil society and even greater scrutiny from the press.
But the staunch defense of the independence of prosecutors, judges and magistrates should not prevent our conscience from questioning whether or not there are agents of justice with hatreds and loves that they correct or exacerbate in their actions. Whether or not there are magistrates and judges with agendas aligned with political forces or lobbies. Whether or not there are more than coincidences in the “timings” of Justice, in the selective leaks of information to newspapers or in the timing of searches by the investigative police.
There is another question, of equal importance, that arises. It is about knowing how Justice deals with this scrutiny, with the very idea that it has to be accountable to citizens and their representatives. Recent history does not paint the most favorable picture.
Take, for example, the theme that makes the headline of this edition of DN. Every two years, the Attorney General’s Office must prepare a report on the implementation of the Criminal Policy Law. You must do so and deliver it to the Assembly of the Republic by mid-October. It is the definition, in a nutshell, of accountability to political power. In 20 years, since there has been a law that requires it, the PGR has never delivered this document, crucial for political evaluation, on time. This year was no exception (the previous report, scheduled for October 2022, was only delivered a year later).
The PGR justifies (further) this delay with “technical limitations”, which require its services to “directly consult hundreds or thousands of surveys to guarantee the reliability of the data”. Of the two, either parliament itself included in the law a set of paragraphs that make it impossible for the Prosecutor to meet the stipulated deadlines, or we are in the presence of a complete demonstration of how Justice and its times are not, at all, aligned with the accountability of other powers.