BRATISLAVA, June 1, (WEBNOVINY) — Speaking in Parliament on Wednesday, Minister of Justice Lucia Zitnanska said that it suits a part of deputies that prosecutors have not brought to a close of any of the scandals that could hurt the current opposition, and it therefore criticizes the government’s draft amendment to the law on prosecution. „The opposition wants at any cost to maintain the status quo, because it politically suits them. (…) It suits you that prosecution in this closed system is unable to bring to court any scandal that could adversely affect you,“ she said on Wednesday to the opposition benches during the parliamentary debate on the amendment that aims to reform the prosecution service in Slovakia.
Zitnanska believes that the opposition criticizes the amendment also because once public control is allowed into the prosecution service and the judiciary, no future government will dare to deny this right of the public any more. She rejected opposition arguments that through the selection of their nominees in disciplinary committees, the government and parliament will be interfering in the independence of prosecution. „People elect Parliament in elections, and other powers are derived from Parliament, therefore it has its people in the Judicial Council, therefore, controls the government,“ she said. It is necessary to bring into the prosecution service a system of checks and balances. „No hermetically sealed system functions properly, it evolves into cliques, not a functional system,“ she said.
Independence of the judiciary or prosecution in her view does not mean that judges and prosecutors will educate themselves, mete out disciplinary sanctions to each other, and themselves educate their successors. „We have created a totally closed system, in which colleagues choose their future peers and colleagues decide what is a breach of duties by their peers,“ she said about the situation in the judiciary and prosecution service.
Acting General Prosecutor Ladislav Tichy does not share the view that prosecutors are themselves creating their successors, because the general prosecutor is elected by the Parliament and the prosecution service evolves from top down. He said the General Prosecutor’s Office would find it permissible to have in selection committees deciding on admissions of new prosecutors people from Parliament or appointees of the President or Rectors Conference. „But we cannot accept having in the commission anyone who works for the Justice Ministry. Someone from the executive branch could interfere with its work,“ he said. According to Tichy, prosecutors suggested moving disciplinary proceedings of prosecutors to general courts, which the Justice Ministry refused.
SITA