As we have argued before, it appears that the Independent Qualification Commission (KPK) holds different standards for different assessees. For example, in the case of High Court President Xhezair Zaganjori, it appears as if the KPK was particularly lenient regarding infractions that have cost other judges and prosecutors their career.
Now that 67 verdicts have been made by the group of 12 KPK members, we are slowly becoming able to inspect the judging behavior and performance of the individual KPK members in more detail.
The graph below shows the overall progress of the vetting so far, in terms of the percentage of magistrates that were confirmed (konfirmuar) and dismissed (shkarkuar), and cases that were interrupted (ndërprerë) or cancelled (pushuar) because an assessee resigned.
Currently, 40% of the magistrates have been confirmed, while 37% have been dismissed. The rest resigned before the vetting could be completed.
However, the individual judgments of the KPK members show a much greater variation. KPK member Alma Faskaj has so far vetted only 4 magistrates, while Roland Ilia and Xhensila Pine both have vetted 19 magistrates. Thus there seems already a great disparity in terms of the KPK members’ “productivity.”
The following chart shows the cases per judge, with the thick blue line indicating the average:
The two clear outliers are Firdes Shuli, who has vetted a total of 13 magistrates, with a 69% confirmation rate, while Brunilda Bekteshi, who vetted 15 magistrates, has dismissed 67% of them. Only as the vetting moves forward and the amount of cases increases, we will be able to see if this trend is indeed meaningful. But at the moment it seems that the judgments of individual KPK members show considerable variation.
