Prague, June 23 (CTK) – The debate about the police shake-up needs to be calm and move from the political to the expert level, Czech President Milos Zeman said journalists yesterday, calling on detectives not to leave the police due to the planned shake-up.
The police restructuring caused a rift in the coalition government. Finance Minister Andrej Babis (ANO) said Interior Minister Milan Chovanec (Social Democrats, CSSD) violated the coalition agreement by signing the police shake-up without discussing it in the coalition. ANO originally threatened to leave the government, but the coalition parties finally agreed to discuss the controversial issue in the cabinet and in the lower house of parliament.
On Wednesday, Zeman mediated a meeting between Chovanec and Babis.
“The two parties are condemned to government cooperation until the next regular election,” Zeman said about the coalition dispute between ANO and the CSSD.
Zeman said he appreciated that the shake-up will be postponed by one month. It would be launched in August, not July as originally decided. He said Police President Tomas Tuhy would have enough time to incorporate the comments by state attorneys into the plan.
Some members of the ani-mafia squad challenged the reform and said its real aim was to stop their investigation of serious information leaks from the police and of other cases. A meeting of the lower house security committee invited outgoing anti-mafia police chief Robert Slachta and high state attorney Ivo Istvan to talk about their suspicions yesterday. Within the reform, the anti-mafia and anti-corruption police squads are to merge.
Zeman said the police officers who want to talk about the suspicions related to the shake-up should be released of the vow of secrecy.
After consulting the issue with lower house chairman Jan Hamacek (Social Democrats, CSSD), Zeman said he believes that the case should be dealt with by a special lower house investigation commission rather than the security committee.
This commission might be set up at the next lower house session.
