Zuzana Čaputová decided to sign the law she does not approve of. (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. President passes the ball on to the Constitutional Court. Ruling coalition lobs another grenade at the president. Pellegrini continues to top polls ahead of presidential vote.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Slovak politics’ new favourite sport: Playing for time
President Zuzana Čaputová is so opposed to the coalition’s rule-of-law-related legislation passed by parliament that she has decided to sign it into law.
If you read the previous issue of this newsletter, that sentence probably won’t strike you as being quite as paradoxical as it sounds. In dealing with amendments that do away with the Special Prosecutor’s Office and generally make life easier for criminals, by cutting down on prison sentences and statutes of limitations for many crimes, including serious ones, the president went for the only option that provides much hope of halting the coalition’s plans.
But the outcome of her approach is far from assured – and meanwhile, the government has handed Čaputová another dilemma by unexpectedly naming a nominee to lead the Slovak Information Service (SIS), Slovakia’s main intelligence agency.
The dispute moves to Košice
The ruling coalition managed to use up one more week of the time that Slovakia’s constitutional bodies would have to consider the changes to the prosecution and penal system before they come into effect on March 15. The prime minister only signed the amendment to the Penal Code and forwarded it to the president on Wednesday, February 14 – six days after its approval by parliament, an unusually long interval by normal standards. President Čaputová announced on Friday that she would consent to the law even though she did not agree with it, in the hope that the Constitutional Court will suspend it before it becomes effective.
Critics of the law changes point out that if they come into effect, even for one day, it will affect a large number of cases. This is because, under existing legal practice, someone charged with a crime is subject to the mildest conditions that apply during any of the period that their case is being investigated and prosecuted – which in this case would mean the generally much more lenient conditions set out in this amendment, even if the law change is later overturned by the Constitutional Court.
The standard procedure for the president would be to file a motion with the Košice-based Constitutional Court only after the text of the new legislation is published in the official collection of laws; she has said she is ready to wait for that to happen. At the same time, the president noted that she could not exclude the possibility that the government will use its powers to drag out the process of publication for an unreasonably long time, in which case she is ready to file the motion even before then.
The people who can hinder the process are Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini (Hlas), who hopes to replace Čaputová as president later this year, and Justice Minister Boris Susko (Smer). Pellegrini has until February 29 (that is 21 days after the house passed the law on February 8) to sign it and send it to the Justice Ministry for publication in the collection of laws. His performance in this game of playing for time will serve as yet another indication for voters of just how much of a “podržtaška” for Robert Fico he is likely to be as president.
Once the law is delivered to the Justice Ministry, the minister has another 15 days to sign and publish it in the collection of laws. If both Susko and Pellegrini stretch the deadlines to the maximum, it could mean the Constitutional Court has just one day – i.e. no time at all, at least by the standards of Slovak justice – to decide on whether to suspend the law.
However, even if the court were to decide to suspend the law and did so before March 15, that decision too would only become effective once it is published in the collection of laws – giving the justice minister another chance to delay the process past March 15, and ensure that the law becomes effective for at least a day.
