The General Prosecutor's Office will have to revise its report on its activities in 2010 after the report was rejected by parliament on July 6. According to coalition lawmakers, the 150-page report contained inappropriate political commentary, the TASR newswire reported.
The Prosecutor's Office claimed that since parliament approved its report for 2009 last year, it "de facto agreed with its activities and the leadership". The Prosecutor's Office also stated that a change occurred after the general election.
"Nobody knows what had happened, but this [satisfaction] didn't apply anymore. The political elite, unusually backed by certain media, began a witch-hunt against the General Prosecutor's Office as an institution and against General Prosecutor Dobroslav Trnka in particular. Statements by the tyzden weekly resembled the workers' campaign against Slánsky et al in the 1950s," states the report –in reference to Communist court processes – as quoted by TASR.
"We've become used to the fact that Trnka presents himself as an opposition politician, but we shouldn't get used to such political commentaries being part of reports drawn up by the GPO," said MP Ondrej Dostál of the OKS faction of Most-Híd.
In response to the criticism, acting General Prosecutor Ladislav Tichý rejected allegations that the report was politicised, saying the report has no political undertones. He further told SITA that GPO wrote only one page on the "witch-hunt" and said he did not believe the page had insulted anyone.
The report states, among other facts, that last year criminal charges were pressed against 57,937 people, which is 124 fewer than in 2009. Also, 86 percent of those accused were men. Further, the rate of solved cases grew last year. At the end of last year the GPO registered 59,674 open cases, down 4,502 from one year ago (7.01 percent). As of December 31, 2010 there were 830 prosecutors in Slovakia, representing 90.71 percent of the planned figure.
Source: TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
