Good candidates for the post of constitutional judges does not necessarily mean that the election will not eventually end up as a farce, said the Opposition Ordinary people party leader Igor Matovič at the weekend. He pointed to the option that coalition MPs with majority in parliament might only nominate their own people for the president to choose from. The MP from the opposition Freedom and Solidarity party Ľubomír Galko believes that if the election is not public, all the hearings will be pointless. "We're accountable to voters in Parliament, and voters have the right to know how I voted," said Galko. Conversely, coalition Smer-SD MP Erik Tomáš is convinced that a secret vote would be in the tradition of developments following the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Slovakia, and replacing it with a public vote would be a step backwards.
MPs are set to elect candidates for the court's judges at the end of January. Parliament will elect 18 candidates to be proposed to the president, who from among them will subsequently appoint nine. The debate on the election of Constitutional Judges gained in controversy after the nomination of the former Prime Minister Robert Fico.
