The Sme daily has reported that former Most-Híd MP Igor Sidor alleged in a submission to prosecutors that he and other governing coalition MPs were instructed how to vote in a ballot held to choose Slovakia’s general prosecutor in May 2011. MPs were supposed to choose individually how to vote in the ballot, which was held in secret. The General Prosecutor's Office has been investigating allegations that the vote was sabotaged since 2011.
The vote in question took place in May 2011. At the time, the then ruling coalition was seeking to avoid the selection of the outgoing general prosecutor Dobroslav Trnka for a second term. Then prime minister Iveta Radičová had threatened to resign if Trnka were chosen. The Constitutional Court confirmed last year that the votes in May and June 2011 by which Jozef Čentéš, rather than Trnka, was chosen were legitimate.
Parts of the testimonies of several MPs, including that of Sidor, have now appeared on the internet. Sidor described how the governing party caucuses arranged for the supposedly secret ballots to be marked. He claimed he was pushed into doing something he did not approve of. Andrej Ďurkovský (a former Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) MP and one-time mayor of Bratislava mayor who was forced to leave the KDH) testified that each party, including his own, agreed a specific way of marking the ballots so that they would be invalid and Trnka would not be elected. Vladimir Matejička (Smer) claimed that the number of types of invalid ballots was about the same as the number of MPs in each caucus and that it was “clearly pre-arranged”. However, Pavol Hrušovský (KDH) and Richard Sulík (Freedom and Solidarity (SaS)) in their testimonies denied the allegations. None of the former MPs who testified that manipulation took place is now sitting in parliament.
Political analyst Miroslav Kusý told the TASR newswire that the leaking of the testimonies must have been intentional, with the aim being to prevent the appointment of Čentéš, elected to lead the General Prosecutor's Office but blocked ever since by President Gašparovič, and to prepare the public for the election of a new choice.
Sources: Sme, TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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