The Judicial Council has an obligation to be transparent to the public

The Association of Journalists of Macedonia (AJM) condemns today’s attitude of the new president of the Judicial Council, Sashko Georgiev, to remove the present cameramen, while allowing journalists to attend the session. This is a bad practice that can easily be taken over by other institutions and contribute to the violation of the public’s right to be fully informed about the work of judicial authorities.

The fact that a long-established positive practice of monitoring the discussion with the presence of videographers has been interrupted with illogical reasoning that the videographers obstruct the work and affect the concentration of those present, without President Georgiev explaining how the videographers suddenly became an obstacle to the work of the council.

We do not see any justification in the reason for this decision made by President Georgiev. According to the Rules of Procedure of the Judicial Council, specifically in Article 7, the circumstances by which the public can be excluded are listed exhaustively, but in the specific case, not a single condition for that has been met.

We ask that this incident to represent just an unpleasant exception and that in the future the Judicial Council work according to its competencies and that its work be open to the public, both with the presence of journalists and videographers.

We expect that the President of the Judicial Council will reconsider this decision and in the name of the correct cooperation of journalists and videographers so far, he will provide conditions for the attendance of the sessions for all interested media workers.