Shouting "Come with us" and "United we are powerful", several thousand people of all ages and walks of life marched in Bratislava on Monday evening. Another estimated 3,000 did so in Slovakia's second largest city Košice.
Protest participants
Máte problém s prehrávaním? Nahláste nám chybu v prehrávači.
The rally built on a similar march that took place in Bratislava on April 18, organised by a group of students who underlined they have no political connections. They have asked for the resignation of the Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák, police chief Tibor Gašparand the special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik, whom they blame for the lack of serious investigation into corruption cases. They also ask for a thorough investigation of the two biggest cases of political corruption in Slovakia's post-communist history: the one linking the Interior Minister to controversial businessman Ladislav Bašternák, who has been charged with tax and insurance premium evasion but denies any wrongdoings, and the other one being the so-called Gorilla scandal involving politicians, officials and a partner at the investment firm Penta discussing kickbacks in a wiretapped apartment in return for procurement and privatisation contracts between 2002-2006. One demand of the earlier students' protest in mid-April has been met in the meantime, namely the scrapping of the controversial Vladimir Mečiar amnesties that blocked further criminal proceedings in the 1995 kidnapping of then President Michal Kováč's son and the murder of Robert Remiáš, who served as a contact for a key witness of the abduction.
In a statement released on Monday in response to the anti-corruption rallies, the Government Office pointed to the fact that Prime Minister Robert Fico has always honoured public gatherings called pursuant to the law and the free expression of views. "The premier welcomes the fact that young people are drawn to societal issues. What matters is to make sure that these kinds of events are decent and aren't used to score political points," read the statement. According to the Special Prosecutor's Office, last year 113 perpetrators were prosecuted for corruption offenses; almost a third less than in 2015. The Special prosecutor Dušan Kováčik explains these figures by a combination of a very complicated procedure to get a case ready for trial and the pressure that media put on his office not realising that prosecutors' job is not to carry out prevention, but enter the scene after the police have already carried out some initial investigation. He added that he sees no reason to resign. In February this year the European Commission reproached Slovakia for deficiencies in the independence of courts, too little progress towards greater effectiveness in the legal system and relatively poor law enforcement.
Galéria
