Pavol Gašpar was appointed deputy director of the National Intelligence Service. A spokeswoman said he will assume all rights, duties and responsibilities of the director. The Fico government has proposed him for the position of director; pending approval from the President, he will have all the privileges of the directorship, according to the statutes of the SIS, said the spokeswoman.
Those statutes were changed recently, in secret, by the government. The opposition party Progressive Slovakia on Thursday asked for the change in statutes to be made public.
Zuzana Števulová said the party had also asked the General Prosecutor’s Office to examine whether the new statute conflict with the SIS Act.
Another opposition party, KDH, demanded a hearing to investigate how Gašpar acquired security clearance.
Both KDH and PS expressed concern that the appointment of Gašpar to head the Intelligence Service, which does doemstic as well as international intelligence, could harm Slovakia’s credibility abroad. Gašpar has been investigated twice, for corruption and incitement to perjury. But he has not been charged. His father, Tibor, former head of the police, is now an MP but has been charged with being a member of an organized crime group.
MP Mária Kolíková of the SaS opposition party will convene an extraordinary session of the House Committee for the Supervision of the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS), to let Pavol Gašpar introduce himself to the committee members and present goals of his SIS management.
President Zuzana Čaputová also commented on the appointment. She said: by changing the statutes of the Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS), the Government has circumvented the President's power to appoint the secret service's head and thus has taken full responsibility for the way SIS will operate in the future.
(TASR)
