The fiasco of the Attorney General vote has raised its ugly head again for the four-party coalition after a ruling of the Constitutional Court has imposed that a secret ballot take place again.
The Constitutional Court judged that coalition MPs had acted illegally when they collected their ballot papers for a secret vote on 2 December but then did not cast them. The coalition blocked the Attorney General vote in this way and the court says that this violated the rights of the attorney general at the time, Dobroslav Trnka.
The coalition parties have been trying to amend legislation to make the voting of the Attorney General a public ballot instead of a blind one as has been the case to date. The plan came about after some unknown coalition MPs ‘deserted’ to the other camp, which wanted Trnka to stay in his post.
As the secret ballot will have to be held again, the coalition could find itself in a tense situation, also as PM Iveta Radicova said she would not head the government if Trnka were to remain in office. The four coalition parties held a special session this week to discuss the issue.
The vote looks set to take place at the next regular parliamentary session convened for 17 May, but the coalition parties could still come up with a way to thwart or influence the vote again until such times as the amended legislation takes effect (it was passed by parliament but vetoed by president Gasparovic). The common candidate of the coalition is Jozef Centes.
[…] the Attorney General (AG), Prime Minister Iveta Radicova said that the coalition would respect the recent judgement of the Constitutional Court to repeat the blind ballot vote. PM Iveta Radicova (c) The […]