Huliak: SNS to Nominate Stefan Harabin as Judicial Council Member

Bratislava, April 22 (TASR) - Coalition lawmaker Rudolf Huliak (SNS) announced on Monday that the Slovak National Party will propose ex-justice minister Stefan Harabin as a candidate for the post of a Judicial Council member. This idea doesn't sit well with opposition KDH, Progressive Slovakia (PS) and SaS, which pointed to Harabin's past involvement with the judiciary. KDH vice-chair and ex-justice minister Viliam Karas finds such nomination a bad joke. "The damage that Harabin has wrought on the entire judiciary is still felt to this day. The return to that era is unacceptable," he claimed. In SaS leader Branislav Groehling's view, the return of Harabin to the Judicial Council is further evidence of ongoing rackets within the coalition and another step towards the destruction of the rule of law. In a normal state with the rule of law, Harabin's nomination would be beyond the pale. "Let's recall everything Stefan Harabin was capable of, back as the justice minister, chair of the Judicial Council and the Supreme Court, when he always put his interests above the law. A case in point was his decision not to allow an inspection of the Supreme Court, for which he also got a disciplinary punishment," added MP Maria Kolikova (SaS). Considerations of nominating Harabin to the Judicial Council demonstrate that the governing coalition has completely lost touch with what's appropriate, thinks MP Zuzana Stevulova (PS). "The Harabinisation of the judiciary is now a synonym for the darkest ages we witnessed in the judiciary in the modern history of Slovakia. Those times must never be allowed to come back," she said. mf/mcs