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“I call on all government officials not to interfere with the judiciary with ill-considered and untrue statements and not to gamble with the already fragile public trust in the judiciary,” Supreme Court President Ján Šikuta responded on Wednesday afternoon to the words of Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer) from the same day.
The speed with which Šikuta responded to the Prime Minister’s press conference was very unusual, as well as the fact that he did not just send a press release, but hastily called a media briefing.
The report would not be enough to explain what happened in the Supreme Court on Tuesday.
Minister of Justice Boris Susko (Smer) hastily sent four officials to the court in the morning to “check” the file allocation system. On Wednesday, Fico explained that they wanted to find out why in recent years “all politically sensitive files” ended up in the senate of judge Juraj Kliment, whom the chairman of Smer has been attacking for a long time.
Susk’s men got nowhere, which outraged Fic.
“That was not a control. They wanted to take the complete database of files from us,” responded Šikuta. According to him, the ministry’s request was unprecedented. According to Šikut, the ministry would have access to the contents of all files of the Supreme Court.
Officials first asked for files from 2001, but when it was explained to them at the Supreme Court that it would be a huge amount of data, the request read: from 2019. Nothing more specific.
They went hunting for evidence
The Ministry of Justice has the right to supervise the system, and the Supreme Court is no exception. However, in this case, according to Šikut, the purpose of the officials’ visit was not inspection, but
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