Following yesterday’s parliamentary session in which a crucial vote was taken to elect the new Attorney General, Robert Fico and his Smer-SD party held a press conference to speak out strongly against the practices witnessed during the voting.
Fico was protesting against the fact that MPs from the ruling SaS party took pictures in their mobile phones of their ballot paper next to their MP card, as proof of who they voted for, in what should have been a secret vote. He called it a gross and unconstitutional infringement of MPs’ right to exercise their mandate freely.
SaS party leader and parliamentary chairman Richard Sulik claims that it was an initiative of the MPs themselves, and that he saw nothing wrong with it. Sulik explained that there were certain doubts that SaS would come under suspicions about who their MPs voted for, and so some MPs took pictures for their own proof. “Under no circumstances did I demand it from them,” argued Sulik, noting that the law had not been broken either.
The election of the Attorney General is all getting a bit messy. Following the exclusion of SDKU nominee Jan Hrivnak after the first round, the SDKU is now refusing to support its coalition partners’ nominee Eva Misikova. This could block the second round today.
Fico claims that the SDKU wanted to make sure there was no Attorney General elected before it convened its party congress, because of the unresolved scandal over the party’s financing. He believes it is all down to the rivalry between PM Iveta Radicova and party chairman Mikulas Dzurinda. “Tomorrow they will probably be taking pictures of how they spoil the ballots” said Fico.