Prague, Aug 27 (CTK) – Czech President Milos Zeman has not granted a single pardon during the first half of his five-year mandate and the Justice Ministry does not even propose any applications to him due to his negative stance on the issue, daily Mlada fronta Dnes (MfD) writes Thursday.
In 2014, the ministry recommended that Zeman grant three pardons. This year Justice Minister Robert Pelikan has not proposed any request for pardon to him anymore, the paper writes.
When Helena Valkova was justice minister, Zeman made it clear that he would grant pardon only to a seriously ill person, MfD writes.
Valkova proposed to meet three requests to him: one applicant was punished for tax fraud and suffered from a heart disease, the two other were people who caused a serious car crash in which they got heavily injured, including a girl who got paralysed and was sentenced for causing the death of her passenger.
But Zeman did not meet any of these requests and he even slightly rebuked Valkova for not submitting cases of fatally ill people to him, the paper writes.
“We believe that it makes no sense to submit any other cases than of a fatally ill person who was unlikely to live more than a few months more to the president,” a Justice Ministry employee said.
Previous president Vaclav Klaus granted 84 pardons during the first 30 months in office. In the second half of his mandate Klaus granted 100 pardons and during the ten years in office 412 in total.
On the other hand, Klaus granted some controversial pardons, from example to Anna Benesova, who was a friend of his wife sentenced for fraud and corruption.
Klaus met one out of 46 pardon applications.
President Vaclav Havel (in office 1989-2003) granted even two times more pardons than Klaus, 860.
As potential applicants can see that it seems pointless to ask for pardon in Zeman’s era, the number of applications has markedly lowered.
The Justice Ministry has received nearly 400 requests for pardon since the beginning of the year and by the end of the year the number will probably reach 700 or 800, MfD writes.
The requests are mostly filed by thieves, child maintenance defaulters
The Presidential Office received about 3000 to 5000 requests during Klaus’s presidency, deputy justice minister Daniel Volak said in late 2013 when Zeman decided to move the agenda of assessing pardons from his office to the Justice Ministry.
In total, the ministry has registered 1661 requests under Zeman’s presidency.
Zeman declared that he did not like the idea of granting pardons except for cases of seriously ill persons already when he was running for president.
On Wednesday, Zeman’s spokesman Jiri Ovcacek said the president is still ready to grant pardon in exceptional cases.
