BRATISLAVA, May 18, (WEBNOVINY) — Ballots from this Tuesday’s election of the prosecutor general in parliament have been shredded, Speaker of Parliament Richard Sulik announced on Wednesday. As he told reporters, the rules of procedure require shredding of the ballots. “An authorized employee shred these ballots. I personally oversaw it,” said Sulik. He also requested the position of the Parliamentary Constitutional and Legal Affairs Committee, asking whether a second round of the election should take place. Sulik expects to receive an answer on Thursday; he, however, thinks that a second round is not necessary when only one candidate was participating, who was not elected.
The speaker of parliament plans to call another election of Slovakia’s new prosecutor general only after the amendment to the rules of procedure adopted on Tuesday is published in the Collection of Laws. This time, the vote should be public. Sulik also wants coalition parties to meet this week in order to agree upon a joint candidate. “The coalition will first have to agree… we will agree upon one single candidate,” Sulik told media. He refused to comment on whether the one candidate will or will not be Jozef Centes, who withdrew from the race yesterday.
Sulik thinks that the new prosecutor general should deal with all cases that arise. He said he cannot imagine that the opposition SMER-SD party would approve a candidate who would be interested in the party’s obtaining off-record funding with the chairman’s own head, hinting at a recording on which a voice very similar to that of Robert Fico claims he managed to acquire funds for the party with his own head. “We have a recording. Original contracts. Testimonies of a witness. The General Prosecution did not take this into consideration. I cannot imagine that SMER-SD would agree with a prosecutor who would properly investigate cases that have not been investigated until now,” said Sulik. Nor can he imagine that another opposition party, the SNS, would agree to a prosecutor who would be willing to ask parliament to lift immunity from prosecution of MP Igor Stefanov. The coalition must find a joint candidate. We govern this country. We are responsible for improving the rule of law – and not for finding a harmless prosecutor.” Sulik is convinced that Centes would not sweep under the carpet the most important recent cases.
The SaS chairman is also convinced that the Tuesday vote was in accordance with all relevant rules, arguing that none of the MPs who were verifying the ballot count had any objections. “The opposition can only object to the fact that coalition MPs did not vote for Dobroslav Trnka,” said Sulik, adding speculation that some SMER-SD MPs may not have voted for Trnka after seeing that the vote was, in fact, really secret.
SITA