BRATISLAVA, January 12, (WEBNOVINY) — The SaS party, member of the outgoing ruling coalition, wants to have an unscheduled parliamentary session convened that would adopt a resolution calling on President Ivan Gasparovic to appoint elected candidate Jozef Centes to the post of prosecutor general. Parliament elected Centes to be the candidate for prosecutor general in a secret ballot on June 17, 2011.
SaS Chairman Richard Sulik insists that by his inactivity the head of state breaches his constitutional duties. “Maybe he will take it more seriously when parliament will urge him,” he said. Sulik is concerned that until the Prosecutor General Office gets its head, the case of the alleged intelligence service file named Gorila will not be investigated properly. SaS would also like parliamentary committees overseeing activities of Slovakia’s three intelligence services to meet in order to organize a deputy audit of the intelligence service SIS that is allegedly the author of the Gorila file. Sulik did not want to say whether his party will initiate further ousters in association with the Gorila case. He only said that it is necessary first that the case is investigated appropriately.
The unscheduled session that the SaS wants to initiate would have on its agenda also the cancellation of immunity sheltering MPs from punishment for transgressions in the second reading. Sulik explained that they react to Speaker of Parliament Pavol Hrusovsky (KDH) who warned that parliament might have not time to deal with this issue by March early elections. “We want to give a chance to MPs who definitively want to cancel it to be able to do so,’ said Sulik. The party however still does not have enough signatures for convening an unscheduled meeting of parliament. It wants to launch negotiations with other parliamentary parties to gain five deputies, whom SaS needs to submit its initiative. However most parliamentary parties do not support a parliamentary session devoted to the leaked document case. The biggest party in parliament, SMER-SD of Robert Fico said they would support the session if SaS succeeds to persuade them that it makes sense to hold such session.
Earlier this month KDH head Jan Figel appealed to the head of the state to immediately appoint Centes. He insisted that Centes was rightfully elected by parliament as candidate for prosecutor general. “The Slovak Republic needs it. Slovakia needs consistent justice, law and order need it,” Figel said. The president however says that there are still doubts related to the parliamentary vote. Therefore, he is still waiting for a decision of the Constitutional Court based on which he will decide whether he will or will not appoint the elected candidate to the position. The president argues that everyone who observed the vote on the candidate for the prosecutor general in parliament, had to perceive the fight of political parties to push through their candidate as well as the fact that politicians tried to amend the law during the vote, questioning of the vote with marked ballots, shredding of ballots immediately after the vote as well as shredding of the recorded testimony of Ordinary People Igor Matovic about the voting procedure by Centes.
Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic would not hesitate with appointing the new prosecutor general were he elected “properly,” as the SaS chairman put it in his statement, the president’s spokesman Marek Trubac told SITA news agency. “Regarding many doubts about the election and motions filed at the Constitutional Court, the President will only decide on appointing or not appointing the prosecutor general after this constitutional institution makes its verdict,” explained Trubac.
SITA