A FORMER MP for the Smer party, Ján Kvorka, and two other people have been charged with attempted assault and limiting personal freedom, the SITA newswire reported. Kvorka could face up to three years in prison if convicted.
Kvorka is accused of kidnapping and then beating a young Roma man who allegedly attacked the MP’s car in a dispute over a woman. Though the incident happened in 2006, police could not prosecute Kvorka at the time because he enjoyed parliamentary immunity from prosecution which Smer refused to withdraw.
Although Smer leader Robert Fico said that what happened to Kvorka could happen to anybody, he now maintains that he does not want Kvorka’s activities to be linked to his party.
“We regard this case as a problem in interpersonal relations which has nothing to do with politics,” said Smer's spokesperson, Erik Tomáš, as quoted by SITA.
Kvorka is not the first nor the last MP to be subject to a criminal investigation while sitting in parliament. Current MPs Igor Štefanov, a former construction minister who represents the Slovak National Party (SNS), and former Bratislava mayor Andrej Ďurkovský, who is currently an independent MP but was elected on the slate of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), could both face charges in separate criminal cases if they do not return to parliament after the elections next March.
