Public opinion polls carried out about the preservation of Slovakia’s Special Court are anything but a reflection of the real situation in society, which was demonstrated by the “negligible attendance” recorded at two public protests organised by opposition parties on Wednesday, May 27, said Justice Minister Štefan Harabin (HZDS) on May 28 to the TASR newswire.
According to a poll carried out by the Polis agency, as many as 58.9 percent of the respondents were disturbed by the Constitutional Court's ruling last week that the Special Court is unconstitutional. Only 23.5 percent of those questioned weren't concerned about this issue.
Justice Ministry spokesman Michal Jurči told TASR that the ministry feels pity for the political opposition which he said cannot accept the defeat of its candidate Milan Karabin in his bid to become head of the Supreme Court for another term. Karabin failed to gain a single vote from the Judicial Council in a May vote.
The ministry views pressure exerted on the Judicial Council from the grassroots as comparable to practices in the 1950s, when the Communist regime misused people in political cases that usually ended in executions – the so-called sham trials.
Harabin is due to stand as a candidate for the head of the Supreme Court in June. Opposition SDKÚ-DS chairman Mikuláš Dzurinda expressed his concern at this move on Wednesday.
“A person who has co-operated with a representative of organised crime (Albanian drug baron Baki Sadiki) wants to become the chairman of the Supreme Court,” Dzurinda said, as quoted by TASR. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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