Parliamentary Chairman admits conflicts in Coalition

If candidates for the Constitutional Court judges fail to be elected by Parliament, the next vote could be public, Parliamentary Chair Andrej Danko conceded on Thursday. The governing coalition was supposed to elect six candidates. Danko conceded that there were conflicts inside the coalition council. When asked about the possibility of an early election, he replied that if Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini and Smer-SD chair Robert Fico were to promote different approaches, the coalition should sit down and decide whether it was worth continuing and in what configuration. The Parliament elected only a single Constitutional Court judge candidate in its Thursday vote: Radoslav Prochazka, who managed to garner 74 MP votes. Seeing as the Parliament failed to elect the required number of candidates even on the fourth try, another vote will be held on Tuesday (June 25) at 5 p.m. Nine vacancies were opened at the Constitutional Court in February, with the House supposed to elect double the number of candidates, from which the President is expected to appoint nine judges to the bench. To date, however, Parliament has elected only 13 nominees. Former president Andrej Kiska already appointed three judges in order to end the gridlock at the Constitutional Court. Hence, the 13-judge court is currently staffed with seven judges. President Zuzana Caputova announced that she would put any further appointments on hold until the Parliament furnishes her with the complete list of candidates.