Pavol Gašpar. (source: SME - Jozef Jakubčo)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Tibor Gašpar, a Smer MP, filed the motion to dismiss the leader of the opposition from his parliamentary post, but it appeared to have been written on the computer of the secret service director, who happens to be his son. Robert Fico cited the conclusions of an audit at the Justice Ministry as a key argument against Šimečka – but the actual audit report tells a very different story. Former special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik is found guilty of a second serious criminal offence after another corruption trial, but remains out of prison. And Zuzana Čaputová is headed for Stanford University.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
The Gašpar & Gašpar situation proves as problematic as expected
It took a while for President Peter Pellegrini to formally approve the appointment of the son of prosecuted Smer MP Tibor Gašpar as secret service director. He did so only at the end of August, even though Pavol Gašpar has been the effective head of the Slovak Information Service (SIS), Slovakia’s main intelligence agency, since March this year and Pellegrini has been in office since June.
It took little more than a week for the public to witness clearly why a direct family connection between the country’s spy chief and a leading governing coalition MP is a problem (albeit far from the only one). To sum up the story in one sentence:
The coalition-initiated motion to dismiss the leader of the opposition from his post as a deputy speaker of parliament was authored by the director of the secret service.
At least, so it appears from the properties of the document that contained the motion. In any country in which the rule of law and transparency in public administration were respected, this would be a major scandal. In Slovakia, however, it is dismissed by reference to the claim – improbable and laughable in equal measure – that the coalition MP and the SIS director use the same Microsoft Word licence.
