Prosecutors' Council Condemns Political Pressure on Zilinka (2)

Bratislava, 9 September (TASR) - The pressure exerted by Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) on Prosecutor-General Maros Zilinka to resign from his post goes beyond the bounds of legitimate political criticism to which politicians are entitled, the Prosecutors' Council warned on Wednesday. The council added that attempts to drag prosecution authorities and individual prosecutors into political battles undermines public confidence in the lawfulness of prosecutors' actions and decisions, thereby reinforcing perceptions that the rule of law is being undermined, the council's chair Marian Corba told TASR. "The lawfulness and justification of prosecutors' actions and decisions in specific criminal proceedings can only be reviewed through procedural means established by law, and not through public political pressure," said Corba. He described calls for specific prosecutors to be removed from the Prosecutor-General's Office without respecting the statutory conditions for transferring a prosecutor to another prosecution office or calls to terminate a prosecutor's service as unacceptable. According to Corba, the prosecution service cannot be considered independent of political influence only when its actions and decisions correspond to the political views of the government in power. The Prosecutors' Council rejects any attempts to exert political influence over prosecutorial decision-making and criminal proceedings. It considers respect for the mutual independence of constitutional bodies to be one of the fundamental conditions for the functioning of the rule of law, and restoring faith in this should be a common goal of the entire political elite regardless of party affiliation. According to the council, Fico's message that the government will prepare and approve a far-reaching reform of the prosecution service if Zilinka doesn't resign amounts to direct interference by the executive branch in the impartiality of the prosecution service and constitutes unacceptable political pressure not only on the prosecutor-general but on all prosecutors. It considers such an approach to be unacceptable in a democratic state governed by the rule of law. The problem, the council said, isn't in the possibility of reforming the prosecution service itself, but in presenting such reform as a consequence of the failure to comply with political demands. It accentuated that any potential reform of the prosecution service should emerge from a thorough and expert public debate. NOTE: This story has been extended to include the last four paragraphs mf/df