Tibor Gaspar (center) celebrates the passing of the law with fellow Smer MPs. (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Coalition MPs voted to make life easier for criminals. What happens next, and what does it say about the government?
In other news, ministers grant themselves a significant pay back-door pay rise. Slovakia will elect new MEPs on June 8.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Rule-of-law changes passed
In a series of parliamentary votes that broke a new record for their number and duration in single sitting last Thursday, the ruling coalition passed its widely opposed changes to Slovakia’s prosecution and penal systems. MPs started voting on the bill’s second reading before noon and it took them until the evening to work through all the votes on the partial changes and amending proposals that observers believe have just one aim: to shelter coalition politicians and their cronies from potential future prosecution or, if they are clumsy enough to get caught, from any meaningful punishment.
Politicians of the ruling Smer and Hlas parties have taken to characterising the changes as a turn towards “restorative justice”, as opposed to a naked power-play. But the mere fact that the amending proposal to the laws governing punishments for crimes and statutes of limitations was put forward by Smer MP Tibor Gašpar further undermined this already unconvincing argument. Gašpar served as president of the Police Corps under previous Smer governments before being forced to step down following the murders of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová, when evidence emerged to suggest that he had been abusing his powers. He was later arrested and held on charges of organised crime in the Purgatory case, before being released, selected as a parliamentary candidate by Smer, and then elected in September last year.
The case against him continues and he is currently awaiting trial. If he is found guilty, Gašpar will face a very different (and less onerous) punishment once the changes he himself proposed to parliament, and that were passed on Thursday, come into effect.
President: I will do what I can
That is set to happen on March 15, the date that the coalition decided the changes would become effective, giving very little time to investigators, prosecutors and judges to adjust to a new reality that, according to experts, will affect so many cases that nobody has yet even tried to quantify them.
But before then, we will see Slovakia’s system of constitutional checks and balances at work. This process will, among other things, make plain why it is important that Slovak citizens next month elect a new president who will act as a guardian of constitutionality and the national interest rather than as just a yes-man for the government.
