Seventy-five of the ninety people working in the administration of the Basic Court in Kumanovo have signed a complaint against the court's president. That is over eighty percent of the people who keep a court running day to day.

The demand is short: remove Snezana Manev.

What the staff say

Trpe Deanoski, president of the UPOZ union, stood in front of the Kumanovo court and read out the list of insults he says employees have endured for years: "cattle", "mongrels", "you're stupid", "you know nothing", "I'll set you on fire", "I'll put you under my feet", "the only way you leave this court is in an ambulance".

Deanoski claims some of these words were used in front of parties to cases and in front of citizens, and that there were also insults on personal, religious and ethnic grounds. He also cited a 2023 Judicial Council report which, he says, found damaged interpersonal relations at the Basic Court in Kumanovo.

One detail conveys the tone better than any list. When a court employee fell and injured herself at work, the reaction the union reports was: "The fat cow fell on purpose to get injured."

How the Judicial Council responded

This is not the first complaint. Staff have repeatedly approached both the Judicial Council and the Ministry of Justice, according to the union. So far there has been no sanction.

After the latest complaint, two Judicial Council representatives came to the court. According to Deanoski, they did not examine the allegations. Instead, employees were summoned one by one to confirm whether the signatures on the document were theirs.

Seventy-five signatures on paper. And the institution whose job is to check what is happening inside the court went to check whether the signatures were genuine.

What the president says

Snezana Manev rejects the accusations in full. She was not at work on the day of the protest - journalists were received by her deputy Nedzat Memeti, who said her absence was justified and handed over her written statement.

"The claims that I exerted pressure on employees are inaccurate, untrue, sweeping and abstract, since they do not cite a single concrete case, when and against whom the alleged pressure was exerted," Manev states. She points out that she has been a judge for 21 years and court president for nine, and that she has never had problems with staff or with the union.

In her account, the protest was organised by the court administrator, the union president and a handful of employees, and the trigger is a disciplinary case against the administrator for negligent and careless performance of duties. Manev also claims some employees refused to carry out assigned tasks, and raises objections about the use of annual leave, extended sick leave and unjustified absences.

"As a judge and court president I accept nothing less, and I make no compromises," her statement reads.

The number that explains the whole story

Both sides cite the same statistic, with opposite readings: the number of employees at the Kumanovo court has fallen from 165 to 115.

For the president, that is grounds for reorganisation and asking more of the existing staff - which some of them refused. For the union, it is the direct consequence of harassment and psychological abuse.

Fifty fewer people in a single basic court is not an administrative detail. It is a third of the capacity that processes every lawsuit, every case file and every hearing in the Kumanovo region.

What happens next

UPOZ wants the Judicial Council to act on the complaint immediately. The deadline they have set is eight days. If nothing concrete happens by then, they are announcing protests and not ruling out a strike that would shut the court.

The Judicial Council has the same eight days to show whether it exists to protect the judiciary, or to count signatures.