Former advocate general at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, the Slovakian Jan Mazak has the humor and tranquility of those who, their career behind them, have seen others. At 69, the president of the Judicial Council of Slovakia is preparing to be ejected from his seat any day now. “They can decide it at any time, all it takes is a simple majority vote in Parliament”he agrees with a smile, while he is, Thursday December 7, still firmly seated on a sofa in the magnificent historic headquarters of his institution, located in the center of Bratislava.
This ” they “ designates the new majority formed around the sulphurous Prime Minister Robert Fico, returned to power at the end of October in this Central European country which he has already led twice between 2006 and 2018. Barely named, this ultraconservative, pro-Russian left-wing leader, anti-migrants and involved in multiple corruption scandals has launched a lightning crusade against all the police, magistrates and journalists who have dared to investigate him and his entourage over the last three years, a brief period when he was in opposition .
“Several people like me now have a sword of Damocles hanging over their heads, because he is ready to do anything to obtain impunity and wants to copy Hungary”, denounces the magistrate. If Mr. Mazak is one of the targets, it is because during his mandate he created an internal commission to sanction certain of his colleagues who were involved in one of the multiple corruption cases which came to light these last years. A “clean hands” operation which resulted in the indictment of around fifteen judges, the departure of a handful of them, but which also earned him serious enmities.
Assassination of an investigative journalist
The work to clean up a state where Mr. Fico had allowed the mafia to infiltrate at the highest levels was still far from finished when his victory in the elections held on September 29, followed by his return to power a few weeks later, brutally plunges this country of 5.5 million inhabitants back into its past of generalized impunity. Targeted for months by an investigation for participation in an organized criminal group, the Slovak leader immediately launched what the opposition and NGOs already describe as ” revenge “ against all those who could have sent him to prison.
Barely days after being appointed, he began by ousting from their positions around twenty police officers who had investigated him and those close to him. “They clearly want to destroy all the sensitive cases we were investigating”, denounces one of the investigators victims of this purge who requested and obtained the status of whistleblower to avoid being fired. Even the courageous police officer Peter Juhas, known throughout Slovakia for having identified and brought to justice the alleged mastermind of the assassination of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018, was removed from the police leadership, six just days after Mr. Fico came to power…
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