HN: Staffing Constitutional Court is new president's biggest task this year

Prague, Feb 14 (CTK) - The nomination of new members of the Constitutional Court (US) is the biggest task that the next Czech president Milos Zeman will have this year, Jindrich Sidlo writes in daily Hospodarske noviny (HN) yesterday.

Three of the 15 posts of constitutional judges are currently vacant and eight judges will have to be replaced by the end of the year because their mandates will soon expire, Sidlo recalls.

Zeman said previously he would propose the candidates for US judges to the Senate that decides on them immediately after his presidential inauguration in early March.

Weekly Respekt released on its website the names of Zeman's first candidates for constitutional judges - Marie Benesova, Irena Pelikanova, Zlatuse Andelova, Jiri Priban and Jaroslav Fenyk, Sidlo notes.

This list is highly interesting and it undoubtedly meets the call for different personalities in the US lineup, Sidlo writes.

He says the final lineup will probably be very different, however, the above mentioned names at least give an idea of what kind of people Zeman and US chairman Pavel Rychetsky are going to propose and the impression is rather contradictory.

Rychetsky's mandate will expire in summer but Zeman said he would like him to keep the post for another term. Rychetsky preliminarily nodded to this offer.

The president proposes candidates for constitutional judges to the upper house of parliament that is now dominated by the opposition Social Democrats (CSSD). Rychetsky is a former CSSD top politician.

All the compositions of the Czech Constitutional Court, established in 1993, can be considered a personal work of the president. The late president Vaclav Havel (1989-2003) had the court of Zdenek Kessler, outgoing President Vaclav Klaus produced Rychetsky's court, Sidlo writes.

Zeman's position is easier than those of Havel and Klaus were, he says.

Havel had to hold difficult negotiations about the US members so that the parliament approved his candidates. Ten years ago, Klaus proposed his nominees to a Senate that disliked him and rejected many of them, Sidlo writes.

President-elect Zeman, former left-wing prime minister, will deal with a Senate with a clear left-wing majority that will be discussing his candidates. And the left will probably want to choose judges close to their views, he adds.

Sidlo notes that CSSD deputy chairman Jiri Dienstbier recently said it is necessary to find "leftist judges".

It will be of crucial importance what other criteria the senators will be considering when deciding on the candidates for constitutional judges, Sidlo writes.

Unfortunately, we will not know this in case of Priban, who has been based in Britain for a long time, because Priban rejected a possible career of a constitutional judge.

Andelova has the reputation of a brave and uncorrupted state attorney. Will this be more important for the senators than Andelova's stance on the health care fees? Sidlo asks.

The CSSD has been criticising the introduction of patients' cash payments in the Czech health care system for a long time.

The names of Priban and Andelova seem promising, but the other proposals are not so good, Sidlo writes.

Zeman proposed former top state attorney Benesova, a CSSD deputy chairwoman who supported Zeman in his campaign before the direct presidential election, he recalls.

Though both Havel and Klaus proposed politicians for constitutional judges, this seems very extraordinary, Sidlo points out.

Fortunately, Benesova rejected the offer. She nevertheless recommended Fenyk, her deputy when she had been supreme state attorney, to Zeman.

Fenyk is widely respected as an expert on criminal law, but he has a flaw in his past. As a military prosecutor in the late 1980s, still under the communist regime, Fenyk sued a conscientious objector, cello player Vladan Koci, and the youth was sentenced to 15 months in prison, Sidlo writes.

It will be interesting to see whether some of the senators will ask Fenyk about this episode of his life, he adds.