People’s procuracies should be
involved in preparing law suits for civil court trials to make them fairer and
objective, the Chairwoman of the NA Committee of Judiciary, Le Thi Thu Ba, said
here yesterday, Feb 16.

Ba was
speaking at a National Assembly Standing Committee discussion on a draft
amendment of the Civil Procedure Code.

Committee members also suggested giving the court the right to over-rule illegal
decisions made by other offices, to install a system to re-examine verdicts by
the Supreme People’s Court Judgement Council, and to be able to adjust the
length of time available for appealing against verdicts.

They
agreed to have the appeal time for court participants lengthened to one year and
those by authorised offices to three years.

Ba said
that the participation of the procuracies in the lawsuit process was part of
their responsibility to make sure laws were carried out appropriately. She added
that this would not affect the processing of the case.

Deputy
Chief Judge of the Supreme People’s Procuracy Le Huu The said that when people’s
procuracies joined the lawsuit process, they should not influence decisions made
by both sides participating in the case.

National
Assembly Legal Committee chairman Nguyen Van Thuan said he agreed with the NA
Standing Committee proposal to give the court the right to over-rule other
offices’ verdicts if they were shown to be illegal.

At
present, courts only can make requests for the dismission of illegal verdicts
and wait for other offices or organisations to process and officially over-rule
them. “This takes too much time and delays the case procedure,” Thuan said.

According to the current Civil Procedure Code, there is no system for
re-examining verdicts made by the Supreme People’s Court Judgement Council.

“The
central-level People’s procuracies and NA Legal Committee can do nothing even
when the Supreme Court verdicts reveal serious mistakes and create huge public
opposition,” Thuan said.

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News