President Pellegrini Refuses to Sign Law on So-called COVID Amnesties

Bratislava, April 25 (TASR) - I won't sign the law on the so-called COVID amnesties and will return it to Parliament for reconsideration with reservations, President Peter Pellegrini stated in a video on social media on Friday. "Every single person who violated the regulations in effect at the time and was punished according to the law is now supposed to be compensated under the new law. I consider this to be an extremely dangerous precedent," declared Pellegrini. The president pointed out that the law would also compensate individuals who knowingly violated measures, for instance, in hospitals or nursing homes, and through their actions could have actually infected someone and caused their death. "I would not be able to look the relatives of COVID victims in the face if the law came into effect in this form. That's why I am convinced it needs to be amended," he emphasised. The head of state pointed out that the Constitutional Court confirmed the unconstitutionality of pandemic measures only in the case of the involuntary confinement of people in quarantine facilities. "In this regard, I therefore agree that people who were confined against their will in state quarantine facilities – and even had to pay for it – should be compensated for this," said the president. Pellegrini agrees that the measures adopted during the pandemic need to be properly evaluated based on scientific knowledge and respect for facts. "We need to know which measures were effective and protected our lives, which were unnecessary, and which were even harmful to our health," he stated. However, he pointed out that the government has so far failed to present such an analysis. "For a year and a half, the Government Proxy for Investigating COVID-19 Pandemic Management [Peter Kotlar] has been working in the government to review the pandemic management process and the use of resources, but we have yet to see the results of his work evaluating whether the adopted measures were correct," he added. Pellegrini stressed that what Slovakia needs is respect for the state, respect for the law and responsibility in the governance of the country. "In this case, the government and Parliament have set out on a dangerous path of compensating people who knowingly broke the law. My veto can help them turn back from this dangerous path," said the president. At the beginning of April, Parliament approved a bill to "remedy injustices caused to individuals" by anti-pandemic measures. lin/mf/df