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Petrikova: Judges' Lawsuits Apparently Organised by 'Somebody Else'
Friday 05 February 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, February 5 (TASR) - The Justice Ministry has never organised any actions related to anti-discrimination lawsuits submitted by judges, Justice Minister Viera Petrikova (LS-HZDS) said on Friday in riposte to claims made by former justice minister Daniel Lipsic (Christian Democrats/KDH) earlier in the day.
According to Lipsic, the mass petition of lawsuits submitted by hundreds of Slovak judges for alleged discrimination in salaries compared to judges of the Special Court was organised by the ministry. Lipsic claims that the Justice Ministry – in his view, bent on inflicting as much damage to the court as possible – facilitated the lawsuits by not appealing against a court ruling on the matter that it lost in a legal dispute with a certain judge.
Petrikova appealed for Lipsic to present evidence for his claims. "Lipsic's performance was an attack on all judges," said Petrikova, adding that the ministry has no motivation to pay a judge €90,000 in compensations at times of the economic crisis and prior to the parliamentary elections (scheduled for June).
The minister accused Lipsic, through his criticism, of merely attempting to cover his personal failure as a lawyer in founding the Special Court (in 2004), which was declared unconstitutional by the Constitutional Court in 2009 and had to be renamed and revamped.
Petrikova also announced that the ministry will appeal against the ruling of the Bratislava court that decided on Monday that the state is to pay almost €90,000 in compensation to Trencin Regional Court judge Ondrej Gaborik. The court said that Special Court judges receiving higher salaries than their colleagues from normal courts was discriminatory.
She further described the entire case as a "political action", adding that it might have been organised not by the Justice Ministry but rather by "somebody else".
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