Slovakia has at last elected a suitable candidate for the post of Prosecutor General after two years of the position being empty due to conflicts of interest. Jaromír Čižnár, a Bratislava Regional Prosecutor and former classmate of Prime Minister Robert Fico was elected on Tuesday by MPs for the governing SMER-SD party as another candidate for the post of Prosecutor General. Čižnár was nominated by MPs from the party of Robert Fico and in a secret ballot he received votes of all 82 MPs present in the 150-member Slovak Parliament.
“The long period during which the Slovak public has been traumatised by the failure and incompetence of the current opposition is over, as Slovakia is finally close to having a new Prosecutor-General,” Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Tuesday. The opposition however deems the new election of a candidate for Prosecutor General unconstitutional, since just over two years ago, on June 17, 2011, parliament had already voted in favour of Jozef Čentéš as a suitable candidate in a secret ballot, a decision to which the Slovak President Ivan Gašparovič overruled with controversial reasoning. The decision is again up to President Gašparovič to decide whether to appoint Čižnár into office or to reject him.
