HÀ NỘI — Courts’ priority should be to improve performance and avoid wrongful convictions of the innocent or acquittals of the guilty, Party General Secretary and President Nguyễn Phú Trọng has said.

“When a verdict is found erroneous, [the courts] must genuinely admit the faults and resolutely correct them,” Trọng said to a teleconference held yesterday in Hà Nội on the judicial sector.

According to reports at the conference, trials were conducted for 499,013 out of 558,152 cases, or 90 per cent of the cases on the Vietnamese court system’s docket in 2018.

The rate of annulled or retracted decisions due to courts’ wrongdoings has been on a stable decline, at 1.3 per cent in 2016, 1.2 per cent in 2017 and 1.14 per cent in 2018.

“The reputation of the court system means the confidence in the political system and in the State, as the court represents justice and social equity,” Trọng said.

“This puts a focus on the political duty of the courts in front of the Party and the people, especially the judges. Every verdict should be persuasive for all parties involved, including the public.”

The building of a contingent of honest, upright and knowledgeable judges should be high on the agenda of courts, as every mistake would cost dearly.

More professional training, more meticulous selection and testing of judges and more inspections to identify weaknesses and errors in judicial activities are needed to enhance the capacity of judges and remove corrupt ones.

Trọng also lauded the efforts by the judicial system in the fight against corruption, bringing to justice many high-profile economic mismanagement and corruption cases involving high-level officials and executives in various sectors, most notably the cases of Trịnh Xuân Thanh, Đinh La Thăng, Phạm Công Danh or Phan Văn Anh Vũ (Vũ ‘Steel’).

From 2016 to 2018, 93.5 per cent of corruption cases and 93.6 per cent of accused in the cases were brought to trial, with thousands of billions of đồng and properties and other assets recovered.

Party General Secretary and President Trọng, also chair of the committee for judicial reform, asked that following Resolution 06 of the 12th Party Central Committee, the courts streamline their structure to enhance efficiency.

He urged the judicial system to be prepared to deal with new problems emerging due to the digital age and intensive global integration, so that both conventional crimes and disputes as well as cross-border or unconventional ones are handled properly.

The court system also must use information technology to boost the quality of its activities, Trọng said.

Trọng stressed that the Party, State and public support efforts to make a court system with strong integrity.

He believed judges and court workers would be able to uphold moral values to deliver sound judgements even in the face of “abounding challenges and temptations.” — VNS