In a secret vote on Wednesday, the parliament elected six candidates for the post of the constitutional judges who will be proposed to Slovak President Andrej Kiska. His task is to choose half of them - meaning three names.
The Constitutional court, when fully occupied, works with 13 constitutional judges. Since mid-February, there have only been four judges working at the constitutional court. Thus, the institution lacks three judges in order to function. It is up to MPs to offer at least 18 candidates out of which the President should choose half. Before Wednesday, Parliament had already failed to choose any candidate for the constitutional court due to disagreements within the coalition on two occasions in February.
Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini (Smer-SD) welcomes the fact that the Parliament elected Constitutional Court judge candidates and hopes that President Andrej Kiska will appoint them without delay, so as to end the gridlock in the Constitutional Court. On the contrary, President Kiska said in his reaction, that MPs again failed to fulfil their duty. According to Béla Bugár, chair of the junior coalition Most-Híd party, MPs from the coalition did not keep their agreement to offer two more candidates to the President. The extra vote in Parliament is set to be repeated on Thursday evening. If these two extra coalition candidates are not chosen, Bugár will insist on a public vote in the next round. The chair of another junior coalition party, Andrej Danko, said that he was not against public vote.
The elected candidates are Ivan Fiačan, Peter Molnár, Rastislav Kaššák, Ľuboš Szigeti, Daniela Švecová and Michal Truban.
