Slovakian Jan Mazak, former advocate general at the Court of Justice of the European Union in Luxembourg, has the humor and calm of those who have seen others after their careers. The 69-year-old president of Slovakia's Judicial Council is preparing to be expelled from his seat any day. “You can decide on it at any time, a simple majority decision in parliament is enough,” he agrees with a smile, still sitting firmly on a sofa in the magnificent seating history of his institution, planted in the center of Bratislava, on Thursday, December 7th .
This “they” refers to the new majority that has formed around the sulphurous Prime Minister Robert Fico, who 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 left-wing leader is ultra-conservative. The pro-Russian, anti-immigrant politician and involved in several corruption scandals has launched a lightning-fast crusade against all police, judges and journalists who have been there in the last three years, a short period in which he has been in the opposition, dared to investigate him and his entourage.
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“Several people like me now have the sword of Damocles hanging over their heads because he is willing to do anything to achieve impunity and wants to imitate Hungary,” denounced the judge. If Mr. Mazak is one of the targets, it is because during his time in office he set up an internal commission to sanction certain of his colleagues who were involved in one of the numerous corruption cases that have come to light in recent years. A “clean hands” operation that led to the indictment of about fifteen judges and the departure of a handful of them, but also brought him serious hostility.
Murder of an investigative journalist
The work to clean up a state where Mr. Fico had allowed the mafia to penetrate at the highest levels was far from complete when his victory in the September 29 election and his return to power a few weeks later brutally collapsed this country with 5.5 million inhabitants is returning to its past of general impunity. The Slovak leader, who has been the subject of investigations for months for involvement in an organized criminal group, immediately launched what the opposition and NGOs are already calling a “revenge” against anyone who could have put him in prison.
Just a few days after his appointment, he began ousting about twenty police officers who had investigated him and those close to him. “They clearly want to destroy all the sensitive cases that we have investigated,” denounces one of the investigators, who was a victim of this purge and who applied for and received whistleblower status to avoid dismissal. Even the courageous police officer Peter Juhas, known throughout Slovakia for identifying and bringing to justice the suspected mastermind of the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak in 2018, was removed from the police leadership six days after Mr Fico came to power …
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