House Constitutional Committee Fails to Convene to Discuss Court Inspection (2)

Bratislava, May 9 (TASR) - Members of the House constitutional committee failed to convene a session on Thursday at which opposition lawmakers intended to inquire about the circumstances surrounding the Justice Ministry's queries regarding the Supreme Court docket and the way in which court cases have been assigned, TASR learnt on the same day. The opposition wanted to discuss the issue with Justice Minister Boris Susko (Smer-SD) and Supreme Court chair Jan Sikuta. Members of the committee discussed the matter only in an informal capacity. Branislav Vanco (PS) asked the coalition why it blocked a proper session, adding that the opposition only wanted to find out whether the Justice Ministry has been imposing an undue and intimidating inspection on the Supreme Court. The opposition noted that not a single session that it's initiated has been convened. In his response, committee vice-chair Tibor Gaspar (Smer-SD) claimed that it would have been pointless for the committee to discuss the issue, as it's necessary to wait for the inspection results first. Gaspar stressed that the committee shouldn't interfere with a supervisory mechanism prematurely. He doesn't rule out the possibility that the matter might be addressed by the committee, but in his view there's no reason for this to happen at this point. Vanco said that Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) has raised accusations against the Supreme Court chair and judges, thus interfering with the independence of the judiciary. Vanco harbours the suspicion that the inspection was unlawful and called its extent "fishing for evidence". He added that there's also a suspicion that the inspection could have been conceived with an eye towards gaining access to the entire database of the information system and all court files. Gaspar replied that the inspection was focused only on the random assignment of cases at the Supreme Court. If it is proved that cases were assigned to specific judges in a non-random manner, that would be "fatal", he stated. mf/df