BRATISLAVA, March 22, (WEBNOVINY) – On Tuesday, Speaker of Parliament Richard Sulik opened the sixteenth parliamentary session in the current election term. Head of the opposition SNS deputy faction Rafael Rafaj was unsuccessful in his proposal to include in the agenda of the session a resolution on protection of democratic principles and application of sovereignty in putting up cultural memorials on Slovak territory and in celebrations of foreign state holidays. Rafaj was reacting to the unveiling of a bust of Janos Esterhazy, a controversial minority politician of the wartime Slovak State in Kosice earlier this year.
Ondrej Dostal of the OKS party and member of MOST-HID caucus was not successful in his proposal to omit from the agenda a draft amendment to the state citizenship act from the workroom of the opposition SMER-SD. According to him, the party that caused the problem should not pretend to solve it. Opposition deputies want to ease the current situation, in which citizens are stripped of Slovak citizenship when they acquire citizenship of a different state. Leader of the SMER-SD caucus Pavol Paska remarked that the potential omission of their draft would be an unconstitutional restriction of deputies‘ right of legislative initiative.
The approved agenda of the sixteenth parliamentary session features 60 items. The ruling coalition member SDKU-DS withdrew some of its drafts before the start of the session, as the coalition partners had not agreed upon them.
Former State Secretary at the Economy Ministry Martin Chren (SaS), who announced his resignation from the post in mid-February, returned to parliament at the beginning of the session.
SITA