The Constitutional Court of the Slovak Republic suspended the law of impunity, which would have rendered courts dysfunctional and virtually abolished penalties for anti-social crimes. However, the Special Prosecutor’s Office is not protected directly by the Constitution. Thus, all serious, anti-social crimes dealt with by the institution in question will be subject to slowing down or their investigation will be stopped altogether. The Attorney General, who, as an impartial observer, should not agree to the abolition of one of the other judicial institutions, has shown himself to be a supporter of today’s coalition. Not that he didn’t mind, he even said it would be enough to reassign prosecutors to other positions and leave cases to them. Who knows if the special prosecutors will be able to focus on solving previous cases.

Now we have once again a direct attack on another democratic institution. Attack on the public television and radio of Slovakia RTVS. As with the former, independent institutions, the Statistical Office, the Office for Health Care Supervision, the Regulatory Office for Network Industries and the not-so-neutral Slovak Information Service, the parliament directly decides through its elected controllers on the CEO and all content. As if statements about the need to listen to alternative media on social networks, which spread Russian propaganda directly in Slovakia, are not enough, they do not follow any verification of sources, no journalistic rules. In a way, they promote and directly moderate blogs with much worse content than this.

The probable president of the Slovak Republic from the Hlas party tries to pretend that this is normal and that the government can interfere with the content and broadcasting of the state public service RTVS. This is normal only in some countries outside the European Union. At the same time, he doesn’t mind political takeover of another high-audience private television. Other media will have to adapt or the same thing will happen to them. Since the Attorney General’s Office is sympathetic to today’s coalition and the Special Prosecutor’s Office dissolved. There is no institution in Slovakia that would deal with possible anti-social crimes associated with the organized liquidation of the media. All that remains is the Constitutional Court, which can only protect a vaguely written constitution.

However, everything that is happening does not solve problems such as incredibly weak education, substandard and failing health care, corrupt judiciary, high taxes and levies, low salaries, indebted public finances. In Slovakia, there is an incredible amount of work connected with the running of the state, authorities, courts, etc. Everything would need to be reformed, moved at least to the present and prepared for the future. But none of this is happening, we are only dealing with how to at least preserve democracy.