Semi-presidentialism, Parliamentarism and Presidents by Miloš Brunclík Michal Kubát

Author:Miloš Brunclík,Michal Kubát
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781351680028
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)
Published: 2018-06-23T00:00:00+00:00

4.3 Other appointments and conflict areas

One can easily find a number of other more or less serious conflicts between the president and other constitutional bodies beyond both the legislative and non-legislative presidential powers enumerated in Chapter 3. Most of these cases are related to the appointment of various state officials. Although in general the president does not block appointments and seeks to find a consensus on persons to be appointed into an assortment of public functions, in several cases a conflict arose between the president and the government, with a few such conflicts being eventually submitted to the Constitutional Court for an ultimate ruling. In the following account, we show a sample of such conflicts that reasonably illustrate this point.

In all three countries, conflicts have appeared in this respect over judicial power, most often over the appointment of judges, most of which were concerned with an alleged incompetence of the judges. In the Czech Republic, President Klaus’s presidential era was notably marked by long-term difficulties in striking a deal with the Senate over the appointment of the judges to the Constitutional Court. Given the fact that the Senate rejected several of Klaus’s nominees (as they were either not competent or were ethically unsuitable due to their activities as lawyers and politicians), and Klaus did not propose further candidates, the risk of a paralysis within the Constitutional Court increased since the mandates of several of its members were to expire soon (Lidovky, 2013b).18

In Slovakia, a serious debate over the judges in the Constitutional Court likewise emerged. In July 2014, President Kiska refused to appoint five out of the six candidates nominated by parliament to be judges in the Constitutional Court. Kiska argued that the candidates lacked professional competence (Kiska, 2015; Ústavný súd, 2015a) and asked parliament to nominate other candidates, but the latter declined, arguing it had fulfilled its duty to nominate double the number of candidates for the three vacant positions. However, in 2015 the Constitutional Court cancelled Kiska’s decision not to appoint the judges and ordered him to act (Ústavný súd, 2015a, 2015b). In contrast to previous disputes over the appointment of state officials,19 the Constitutional Court severely limited the president’s discretion as far as the appointment of judges to the Constitutional Court is concerned, as the president is obliged to choose from a pool of candidates selected by parliament (Horváth, 2017: 56–57). Still, Kiska insisted that he had the right to evaluate the quality of the candidates and rejected another two candidates in 2016 (Prezident, 2016).

As far as Poland is concerned, there has only been one case in which a sharp dispute came to have a societal and international impact, which concerned the Constitutional Tribunal of 2015–2016 and in 2017. At that time, parliament approved six laws prepared by the ruling Law and Justice party in order to “correct” the position and functioning of the Constitutional Tribunal. However, opponents of these bills argued that they were unconstitutional. However, the affair had no effect on the president’s capabilities regarding

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