IT’S ASIA week. First, Bangalore turned out to be the city deciding the country’s future. And then the Indonesian Embassy helped us to understand that our president isn’t able to write a single sentence without making several mistakes.
Apparently, local lawyers and politicians are so clueless when it comes to solving the dispute between President Ivan Gašparovič and general-prosecutor-elect Jozef Čentéš that only the Bangalore Principles of Judicial Conduct offer a way out. Without them, the Constitutional Court would be stuck, due to the fact that Gašparovič and Čentéš have filed so many objections against the various judges that there is no one left to decide. Smer has now approved a highly controversial new law allowing even biased judges to decide, if there is no one else who can do the job.
The legislation passed on the same day that someone found a series of photos from the International Bonsai Exhibition in Nitra on the Indonesian Embassy’s website. Proving that he is no grammar-bonsai, Gašparovič wrote “Som rád že som mohol navštíviť tento dom krási” (I’m glad that I had the chance to visit this house of beauti [sic]) in its visitors’ book. The story is much more fun given the fact that the president is responsible for the chaos around Čentéš. He refused to appoint him, arguing that the man would pose a threat to the functioning of the prosecution. Gašparovič, who now argues that “to err is human”, based his rejection mainly on Čentéš’ accidental shredding of testimony, which is not believed to have included any sensitive information and was soon after resubmitted. And it is Gašparovič who spammed the Constitutional Court with objections.
Let’s summarise the situation – the prosecution has been without a proper boss for over two years and its current leadership is suspected of illegal activities. The president is refusing to appoint the elected general prosecutor and is blocking a normal solution at the Constitutional Court. The judges themselves have been impotent when it comes to dealing with the case, which should have been a top priority all along. And the only way out of this seems to be through Bangalore. What has the country done to deserve such krási?
