Coalition of NGOs: Candidates’ scores confirm that the selection process of the Chief State Prosecutor was not regular

Pristina, June 21, 2022 – The non-governmental organizations Kosovo Institute for Justice (IKD), Group for Legal and Political Studies (GLPS) and FOL Movement (hereinafter: Coalition), on March 24, 2022, presented the Report “Integrity of the selection process of the Chief Prosecutor of State (Monitoring and evaluation report of the selection process of the Chief State Prosecutor).”

In this Report as well as in continuation, the Coalition considered it necessary that the process of selecting the Chief State Prosecutor should return to the zero point, assessing that the Prosecution Council of Kosovo (KPK) had failed to ensure the integrity and meritocracy of this process.

Among other things, the Coalition had assessed that the interview panel had failed in an objective and comprehensive evaluation of the candidates. Such irregularity of the process is now best evidenced by the candidate evaluation forms (score sheets) from each member of the interviewing panel. The Coalition managed to secure these score sheets on June 10, 2022, only through the Information and Privacy Agency (AIP), since the Prosecutorial Council had not responded at all to the Coalition’s Request for Access to Public Documents, submitted on April 4, 2022.

After analyzing the score sheets of each member of the interviewing panel, for each candidate for Chief State Prosecutor, the Coalition has noticed that the evaluation rationale for each scoring category is shallow and lacks proper analysis, and is in complete contradiction with the Guidelines for Articles 13 and 14 of the Regulation on the Appointment of the Chief Prosecutor and Chief Prosecutors, approved by the KPK itself. The members of the interviewing panel failed to provide an analytical justification for the assessment made, simply giving superficial justifications, without a genuine analysis and convincing justification for the assessment made.

Although the reasoning and argument should be organized in such a way that it is as convincing as possible and also to protect the member’s own points, however, the interviewing panel has not managed to build such a reasoning, since the points of these members do not matches the reasoning given and this is best observed in some scoring categories where the member’s reasoning is full of praise and without any remarks and then the candidate is deducted some points, without showing the reason why those points are being deducted and where he failed the candidate.

According to the aforementioned Guide, to ensure a fair, consistent and meritorious approach, Panel members should take notes about the answers to the questions and use that information to decide what standard the candidate has achieved in relation to the specific competence under consideration. However, with such shallow reasoning, from only one page per candidate, with a minimum of sentences for a scoring category (in certain cases only with one sentence), it is clearly shown that the members of the KPK interview panel give the impression that they have developed this process without giving it the time and importance that belongs to this process, as well as they have not managed to convey to the public the conviction that the assessment made for the candidates was adequate, based on the interview and what is the most important undermining the meritocracy of the process. Also, in the justification of the score sheets, it was seen that the members of the interviewing panel are not even clear about the powers of the Chief State Prosecutor and those of the Prosecution Council, since in their reasoning, the candidate is estimated to have not shown vision, strategy and management skills for the general challenges in the prosecutorial system which are under the competence of the KPK as a collegial body and also the competence and responsibility of the Chief State Prosecutor. Regarding this problem, the Coalition also in the published report on the selection process of the Chief State Prosecutor emphasized that many questions in the Concept Document form are related to the processes that are the competence of the KPK and not of the Chief State Prosecutor.

In conclusion, the Coalition’s past findings that, among other things, the Regulation for the appointment of the Chief State Prosecutor and the Chief Prosecutors of the Prosecutions of the Republic of Kosovo as well as the relevant Guide have not found adequate application in the evaluation of candidates, failing to ensure the integrity and meritocracy of process, this is reconfirmed even after providing the score sheets of the members of the interviewing panel. Therefore, the Coalition continues to insist that the process of selecting the Chief State Prosecutor should be returned to the zero point, in order to guarantee the integrity and meritocracy of the process.