Parl’t speaker, deputies convene to discuss judicial appointments
The Parliament speaker and his deputies convened for a second day on Friday in an ongoing bid to appoint the country's new judicial leadership.
The choice of Supreme Court President is to be made from six current vice presidents: Angeliki Aliferopoulou, Giorgos Lekkas, Pinelope Zontanou, Iosif Tsalaganidis, Irini Kalou and Dimitra Kokotini.
The choice of the court's prosecutor will be amid its current deputies: Dimitris Dasoulas, Vasileios Pliotas, Haralambos Vourliotis, Vassiliki Theodorou, Efstathia Spyropoulou and Panagiotis Karagiannis.
The posts have been vacant since June 30, when President Prokopis Pavlopoulos refused to sign a presidential decree for the appointment of Kalou and Kokotini for president and prosecutor, respectively. Both judicial officials had been selected by the previous SYRIZA administration.
The process on Thursday sparked a clash between the government and the leftist opposition SYRIZA. “The Mitsotakis government is restoring institutional order in the matter of the selection of the judicial leadership,” center-right New Democracy’s party secretary Stavros Kalafatis said after Thursday’s session, emphasizing that the current administration is appointing officials based on meritocratic criteria.
SYRIZA’s parliamentary spokesman Dimitris Tzanakopoulos, for his part, accused the government of seeking to politicize the selection of the judicial leadership. Its approach, he said, “not only violates the Constitution” but also “trivializes” parliamentary procedures.
