Beyond a perfect knowledge of the laws, the permanent study and analysis of precedents, even after graduating university exams, a judge must possess a quality that is hard to come by: wisdom. Aside from God, only the magistrate has the power to judge people’s actions, and wisdom becomes essential for a very simple reason: law enforcement has its consequences.
The incapacity to envision the consequences of one’s own actions is in no case a sign of wisdom, a notion which, although with a Biblical sound to it, defines the requisite quality for a magistrate. And there is no use in saying justice was served to one individual – and his lawful rights were restored – if by it, injustice was done to hundreds of thousands of others. Or if the effect is absurd and reminds, as someone noted, of Kafka’s fiction.
Take Constanta. The facts are known: a trivial war between a private firm and local authorities, as hundreds others in this country, after a court decision drags Romania’s tourist city into chaos. Paralysed public transportation, dark streets, no hot water.
The verdict of the Constanta court did nothing less than suspend the city hall’s right to levy taxes. Or at least it makes this right subject to discussion.
How was that possible? Did the court get lost in the many figures and letters of the municipal council’s decisions, of which just one referred to public transportation, the source of all misunderstanding? Did it confuse the papers, fail to understand what each of them meant and suspended them all? Then, what came of the rigor and care for the documents on file, for their interpretation?
Did the same court decide that the decisions of the local council – sued by the transportation firm – are all illegal and must be suspended? But can a document – which contains countless provisions – be entirely illegal, while it refers to taxpayers, to the virtual majority of natural and legal persons in the city? Was it that the plaintiff, the owner of the public transportation company, enjoyed an inexplicable sympathy from the judge?
As the city mayor said, this is a premiere. In a country that talks of nothing but bad creditors, debts, arrears, anaemic budgets, we have had, for a while, a city, and not any city, where a city hall asking to pay your taxes can be laughed in the face and asked: “based on what law?”
On the other hand, obviously the Constanta mayor’s decision to cut street lighting and hot water, claiming it cannot collect the money, smells of excessive zeal or an attempt to arouse a strong public reaction against an arcane judicial decision. A debatable decision, therefore – and proof was the reaction of the local council, which accused the mayor of abuse.
The Constanta episode is “spectacular” because all public utilities were blocked all at once. But the nonchalance with which, in Romania, hundreds of thousands of people are often left without public transportation and water because somewhere, above, economic and administrative entities fail to reach an agreement, has become almost a daily occurrence.
Periodically, some energy, heating or water regies cut a vital public utility, just like that, because payments were not on time, because indebted companies are on the same list with indebted citizens, because the managers or “decision-makers” rely on public scandal and the newspapers to blackmail the people they struggle with. The beneficiaries of public utilities, to use an almost ubiquitous word, the citizens, can suffer all they want: what matters is that public utility bosses flatter their pride and emerge victorious from some dispute with other clans.
The Constanta incident deserves a place in law classes. It is a superb piece of domestic justice, an expression of the undying artistic-political-juridical current of Romanian absurdity. Thank God the appeal was judged in an emergency procedure: otherwise, Constanta, because of a petty trial between buses and the city hall, would have turned into a reborn Tomis. A Less civilised one, though.