Parliament has once again elected only a single Constitutional Court judge candidate in its repeated vote on Tuesday - Justice Ministry state secretary Edita Pfundtner. As the House has again failed to elect the required number of candidates, another vote is scheduled to be held in September. Following the failed vote, the leader of the coalition party Most-Hid, Bela Bugar, announced the his party will officially propose that the September election of judge candidates be held, for the first time, by public rather than private vote. This followed a similar statement earlier in the day by the coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) chair Andrej Danko. President Zuzana Čaputová welcomed the proposal of a public vote, and reiterated that she will appoint judges to the Constitutional Court only once she receives the full number of nominees from Parliament.
The Smer-SD party continue to insist on a secret ballot, characterising it as the fairest way of voting. Meanwhile Smer-SD MP Dušan Jarjabek, addressing fears that the party is trying to manipulate the selection process, stated that party leader Robert Fico no longer wants to make it onto the Constitutional Court.
With nine vacancies formed at the Constitutional Court in February, Parliament was tasked with electing 18 candidates from which the President was to appoint the nine needed judges to the bench. To date, however, after several attempts, Parliament has elected only 14 nominees, four short of the required number. Former president Andrej Kiska appointed three judges in order to end the gridlock at the Constitutional Court, leaving the 13-judge court, however, staffed with only seven judges.
