PRESIDENT Ivan Gašparovič has filed an objection to all three of the Constitutional Court justices who are currently slated to judge an earlier complaint he submitted regarding the composition of the court senate that will assess whether his refusal to appoint Jozef Čentéš, elected to the post of general prosecutor by parliament, is legal, the Sme daily reported on February 19.
Gašparovič objected to the presence of Justices Lajos Mészáros, Sergej Kohut and Juraj Horváth on the panel. They are supposed to deal with his previous complaint, submitted against justices Ján Luby and Ladislav Orosz, who themselves replaced Milan Ľalík and Peter Brňák after a complaint filed by Čentéš was upheld at the end of January.
The president’s spokesperson Marek Trubač did not specify on what grounds Gašparovič objected to the justices, Sme wrote. He has now lodged objections to five of the court’s 13 justices.
Gašparovič submitted his first complaint after Čentéš succeeded in his objection towards the original composition of the judicial senate that was to consider his complaint, which was submitted on January 3. He claimed that two members of the panel, Ľalík and Brňák, could be biased and partial. A senate comprising Justices Mészáros, Kohut and Horváth accepted his objection on January 24, and the Constitutional Court replaced Ľalík and Brňák with Luby and Orosz.
Mészáros and Kohut were among the justices who did not support a Constitutional Court ruling in November 2012 which gave Gašparovič the right not to appoint Čentéš as the country’s chief prosecutor.
