The Constitutional Court on Wednesday announced that it was dropping the president's request to clarify doubts that emerged due to certain contradictions between a judgement announced viva voce by the Court's Third Senate on March 17, 2015 and the additional written explanation that the president received two months later. On Wednesday the Constitutional Court only announced that it was "rejecting the Slovak president's proposal, without providing any explanation. Court spokesperson Anna Pančurová later said that the entire ruling would be released within a few days.
According to the Court on Thursday, there's no legally relevant dispute between the president and Parliament as claimed by Kiska, so his request of clarification doesn't meet the most fundamental requirement for launching a process of explaining the Constitution. At the same time the issue as such has implicitly been resolved by the Court's Third Senate, which in case of three complaining judges (Eva Fulcová, Juraj Sopoliga and Miroslav Duriš) stated that the president violated their right of access to public offices under non-discriminatory conditions.
"Therefore, the president is obliged to nominate exactly half the number of candidates for judges of the Constitutional Court [proposed by Parliament], whereby president is not entitled to appoint less than half the number of candidates … because he believes that there are serious reasons pertaining to the personalities of individual candidates raising relevant doubts on their ability to carry out the post of Constitutional Court judge in a manner that would not affect the dignity of the post of Constitutional Court judge", reads the Constitutional Court's statement.
Meanwhile, constitutional judges Ľudmila Gajdošíková, Lajos Mészáros, Ladislav Orosz and Rudolf Tkáčik presented a different legal opinion than the one contained in the aforementioned ruling.
The president last year should have selected three constitutional judges from among six candidates proposed by Parliament. However, he appointed only one judge, Jana Baricová. Andrej Kiska stated that in the remaining candidates he didn't see enough interest in constitutional law and necessary competence. The rejected candidates then complained to the Constitutional Court.
Source: TASR
