Six candidates ran to be Prosecutor-General, Jozef Centes, Tomas Honz, Juraj Kliment, Rastislav Remeta, Jan Santa and Maros Zilinka. The Prosecutor of the Special Prosecutor's Office Maros Zilinka was elected the new prosecutor-general in a vote in Parliament on Thursday. He was the candidate of one party, that is of We Are the Family, which nominated him. The junior coalition For the People party did not vote for him
President Zuzana Caputova welcomed the fact that Parliament elected the new Prosecutor-General in the first round of the vote already.
The new prosecutor-general will never experience any pressure from me, Prime Minister Igor Matovic (OLaNO) posted on a social network on Thursday. Matovic said that he was keeping his fingers crossed for Maros Zilinka to withstand any pressure from any side. The premier added that the National Crime Agency is also not experiencing any "pressure" from him and so it can carry out a thorough cleaning.
House Chair Boris Kollar (We Are Family) expects the newly-elected Maros Zilinka to cleanse the prosecutor's office in his new role as Prosecutor-General and firmly hopes that Zilinka will not let Slovakia down.
Justice Minister Maria Kolikova (For the People) hopes that Maros Zilinka in his new capacity as Prosecutor-General will co-operate in the implementation of the reform of the prosecutor's office. She congratulated Zilinka on his election and refused to comment on objections that had been raised against him by her political party.
The election of Maros Zilinka from among the candidates for the post of prosecutor-general is the result of a compromise by the OLaNO caucus as it has been talking all the time about trying to reach an agreement in the coalition, Parliamentary Vice-chair Gabor Grendel (OLaNO) said after the results were announced. Grendel does not mind that the opposition also voted for him, claiming that he would have won even without such support. According to him, the fact that the junior coalition For the People party did not vote for him will not disrupt the further functioning of the coalition.
The Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party believes that Maros Zilinka as the new Prosecutor-General will help restore public trust in the rule of law, SaS leader Richard Sulik declared on Thursday. Independent MPs around Peter Pellegrini believe that Zilinka will retain independence in the post of prosecutor-general.
Prime Minister Igor Matovic has been utterly defeated in the battle for prosecutor-general, as the election of Maros Zilinka to the post essentially means that the coalition cast a vote of no-confidence in Matovic, TASR was told by opposition Smer-SD party spokesperson Jan Mazgut on Thursday.
The newly-elected head of the Prosecutor-General's Office should eradicate nepotism, corruption and cleanse toxic individuals, thinks the Let's Stop Corruption foundation that welcomed Zilinka's election on Thursday. Transparency International Slovensko (TIS) believes that he is adequately equipped to meet public expectations. TIS proposed to change selection proceedings so as to open jobs at the Prosecutor's Office also to other legal professions and curb nepotism. There should be transparent competition for senior posts. "In the past, only one or two candidates at most were applying for the posts of district and regional prosecutors because it was known beforehand who would be picked," said foundation director Zuzana Petkova. She believes that it is necessary to reset the mechanism designed to prevent undue intervention with the prosecutor's work from above and introduce better supervision and transparency.
Source: TASR
