Gov’t seeks to increase Supreme Court judges

Justice Minister Tharcisse Karugarama on Friday tabled before parliament a bill amending the law governing the functioning of the Supreme Court, by increasing the number of judges at the top court by six, to 20.Defending the proposal before the House, the Minister said this was necessitated by the backlog of pending cases. “A huge backlog of cases has been captured in the system. Allow six more judges to join the Supreme Court,” the minister told the House.Another effort to reduce the backlog was a bill the minister on the same day tabled that seeks to empower court registrars to defer certain applications to appellate courts.Karugarama told lawmakers that lawyers, particularly in civil litigation were appealing to the Supreme Court as a strategy to delay execution of court orders.Currently, the court is structured in such a way that registrars cannot defer applications to appellate courts even when it is clear that they are inadmissible.“Basically, the registrars are being empowered to defer some applications,” he added.He said in spite of earlier reforms, there is a huge backlog of cases at the Supreme Court as registrars are not empowered to defer certain petitions to the court.Under Rwandan courts, a case is considered backlogged when it is not attended to for a period of six months. Karugarama said one of the bills intends to redistribute competences and restructure the court system in order to reduce the number of cases that find their way to the High Court and Supreme Court. He told the House that reforms had been delayed due to concerns over the quality and experience of judges at the lower courts.Despite voting to approve reception of the two legislations, different parliamentarians seemed not to buy the proposal to increase the judges, while others faulted the minister for bringing an amendment to the Supreme Court law for the second time in a year.MP Juliana Kantengwa, said despite the fact that the bills aimed at ensuring that Rwandans easily access justice, she said the laws presented are in most cases unclear.“Minister, let me speak for these MPs….we question the quality of bills being introduced here,” she said. The MP complained that quite often, parliamentary committees have always had to juggle with unclear bills resulting in wastage of time.“This should not be the style of work,” she said.MP Juliana Uwacu told the minister that she would not support the Supreme Court bill unless there was a guarantee that the ministry would increase the number of judicial staff at the lower courts which are likely to suffer a backlog as a result of the reforms.“Your arguments are not convincing Honourable Minister,” she added.MP Yvone Mukayisenga said; “Six more judges to Supreme Court? No. That’s a big number considering the remuneration. We are empowering registrars to deal with the backlog problem. Spare public funds.” Others asked the minister why he could not temporarily transfer judges to the Supreme Court rather than make permanent appointments.Karugarama however, told the MPs that while their concerns were valid, they needed to appreciate that government was working to avoid miscarriage of justice.Speaking to the media at Parliament Buildings Karugarama said he could not recall the number of backlogged cases at the Supreme Court. But an official at the justice ministry put the figure at 1,767 with 1,371 being appeals against criminal rulings by lower courts. The Supreme Court has 14 judges and according to the official, it adjudicates on average 45 cases per month. The judges sit in panels of three except for constitutional and presidential elections result related petitions that has a panel of nine judges.Assuming there is a backlog of 1 767 and an average of 45 cases are adjudicated per month with no new petitions coming in; it would take the Supreme Court 39 months to clear the current backlog.

National

Gov’t seeks to increase Supreme Court judges