List of author's articles, page 7
A year of change
THE YEAR 2014 brought Slovakia its first ever president with no previous political background or one-time membership in the communist party, while preventing Prime Minister Robert Fico and his party Smer from controlling all key institutions: the government, the parliament and the presidential palace.
Centre-right continues crumbling
The year began with the need for the centre-right to consolidate itself, but 2014 saw a continuation of the fragmenting trend instead.
Čižnár to stay on as prosecutor
THE LANDMARK ruling of the Constitutional Court from December 4 on the case of lawfully elected but never appointed general prosecutor Jozef Čentéš is unlikely to induce any changes to one of the most powerful judicial positions in the country.
It’s complicated
“IT’S a very complicated issue,” Health Minister Viliam Čislák responded to a journalist’s question about whether it is possible to be competent while still violating the law. The journalists were grilling Čislák over Smer nominees signing overpriced catering contracts on behalf of state-owned hospitals with a pair of suspiciously intertwined companies.
The resignation game
PRIME Minister Robert Fico has got the attention of media by suggesting that a military conflict in Ukraine has a 70-percent probability. “I am talking about a big military conflict,” Fico heralded, insinuating that he has a bigger conflict on his mind than that of Russia and Ukraine. Yet, renowned foreign policy expert Alexander Duleba of the Slovak Foreign Policy Association said he does not expect the situation in Slovakia’s eastern neighbour to get any worse.
Gašparovič violated Čentéš’s rights when he refused to appoint him
FORMER president Ivan Gašparovič violated Jozef Čentéš’s basic rights when he was lawfully elected by the parliament to the post of prosecutor general, but Gašparovič refused to appoint him, the Constitutional Court ruled on December 4. The court has also cancelled the late 2012 decision of Gašparovič.
Kiska makes first address to MPs
POLITICIANS can hardly keep convincing people that the biggest problem of health care is the lack of money if the state tolerates murky deals and waste of public funds in the healthcare sector, President Andrej Kiska said in his first key address to the parliament on November 26 – with Prime Minister Robert Fico notably absent. The president’s speech came on the heels of a number of changes to senior political posts, including that of the speaker of parliament after the resignation of Pavol Paška provoked by a recent scandal surrounding overpriced medical equipment and subsequent anti-corruption rallies. Fico did not attend and Kiska spoke to a half-empty house in the presence of a single cabinet official, Finance Minister Peter Kažimír, the Sme daily reported.
Judges should explain their work
IN THE Netherlands many judges are on Twitter or on Facebook, commenting on their work to make people understand what their job is, says Dutch Ambassador to Slovakia Richard Van Rijssen, who suggests that if judges in Slovakia started themselves to be transparent about what they do and openly explain judgments, that would help to improve the perception of the judiciary here a great deal.
Harabin out of Judicial Council
JUDGES have opted for yet another change to the country’s ailing judiciary, selecting pro-reform judge Dušan Čimo over Štefan Harabin to fill a vacant seat on the Judicial Council, a collection of judges that help oversee the country’s court system.
There is still a long road ahead
ŠTEFAN Harabin failed in his last shot at keeping power in the Slovak judiciary after judges on November 25 said they do not want to see the man who lorded over the sector for much of past decade to have a seat on the Judicial Council, which oversees the functioning of courts nationwide. The year 2014 is praised by many as a year of change in the judiciary, and is proving a thorny one for Harabin who also failed in his bid to get re-elected as Supreme Court chairman and departed as head of the Judicial Council as well.
Smer’s Pellegrini takes up speaker role
PRIME Minister Robert Fico has picked a rising star of his Smer party, Peter Pellegrini, to become the speaker of parliament after Pavol Paška resigned from the key constitutional post on the heels of a scandal, and alleged corruption, surrounding overpriced medical equipment.
Tending to the garden
PAVOL Paška’s position for some time seemed almost unshakeable in the ruling Smer party. Thus the recent resignation of Smer’s strongman from the post of speaker of parliament opens up questions about what is changing in Robert Fico’s political garden, which this year has seen the uprooting of three cabinet ministers.
Geopolitical tensions intensify challenges
Geopolitical tensions, fuelled by the Russian invasion of Ukraine and subsequent tit-for-tat sanctions the European Union and Russia have imposed on one another, brought political, economic and security challenges for all of central and eastern Europe, including Slovakia which is heavily energy dependent on Russia.
Market regains confidence
Improved economic, consumer and business confidence including a growing investor appetite have had a positive impact on the real estate market in 2014 say leading real estate professionals, suggesting that more perceptible results are expected next year. The Slovak Spectator spoke to Andrew Thompson, managing partner with Cushman & Wakefield, Miroslav Barnáš, managing director of JLL Slovakia, Ermanno Boeris, director of Colliers International, Kamil Baďo of Gleeds Slovensko and Marián Mlynárik of CBRE’s capital market department about recent trends of the market.
Rule of law needs improvement
Twenty-five years after the fall of the communist regime, the state of courts and law enforcement still needs major reform to improve the quality of democracy as well as the business environment. “Together with corruption, [the rule of law] is usually rated among the worst indicators for doing business in Slovakia,” Markus Halt, spokesman for the German-Slovak Chamber of Commerce (SNOPK), told The Slovak Spectator, referring to regular surveys among German investors. “The concerns are mainly connected with poor law enforcement.”
Smer strongman Paška steps down
ONE of the ruling Smer party’s key strongmen, Pavol Paška, resigned as speaker of parliament the same night as municipal elections, overshadowing reports on outcomes of mayoral races across Slovakia. Paška’s departure came on the heels of two rallies fuelled by anger at a widely criticised tender for an overpriced computer tomography (CT) device set for purchase by a financially ailing hospital.
Independents surge, Smer gains on opposition
FEEDING on voters’ frustration with traditional parties, independent candidates led the way in municipal races on November 15, taking some 38 percent of the mayoral seats across the country. Bratislava went to an independent candidate, Ivo Nesrovnal, who in a closely watched race defeated the incumbent Smer-backed independent Milan Ftáčnik, and Milan Kňažko, who also ran as an independent backed by a number of opposition parties.
CT scandal rocks politics
PRIME Minister Robert Fico was unable to calm the storm around the shady purchase of an overpriced computer tomography (CT) device by a financially ailing hospital in Piešťany as he sacked Smer nominee Zuzana Zvolenská from the post of Health Minister and Renáta Zmajkovičová, a key Smer official, who sat at the top of the hospital’s supervisory board, as parliamentary Deputy Speaker. The opposition is calling for the head of Speaker of Parliament Pavol Paška for what they call his links to the firm Medical Group SK, which won the dubious tender.
Precarious progress
THOSE who were students in November 1989 were fortunate enough to inhale the first sips of freedom on Slovakia’s squares while watching the corroding regime crumble are now into their mid-forties. Their children no longer understand references to pre-Christmas queues for mandarins and bananas, excruciating passport controls with police officers looking into bags to make sure travellers did not surpass the quota on candies purchased in Hungary, or May 1 parades in pioneer uniforms. They are the last generation to measure boredom in school by classes about “scientific communism”, but they are also the generation who still were able to catch the first train to foreign countries and opportunities their parents – the so-called Lost Generation – never dreamt of.
Twenty–five years of freedom
TWENTY-FIVE years after the protests that helped launch the Velvet Revolution in what is now Slovakia, people in the country see November 17, 1989 as one of the positive events of their history, but remain wary of social and job insecurity, according to a survey by the Institute for Public Affairs (IVO) in cooperation with the Focus polling agency and the Czech Public Opinion Research Centre.
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