BRATISLAVA, November 3, (WEBNOVINY) — The leader of the Ordinary People group in Parliament Igor Matovic has no less than two scenarios how to register the association as a political movement, despite the fact that the name “Ordinary People” is already used by another political party. He does not want to reveal his plan. “As we know, the thief is not asleep and I don’t want to reveal how we will do it, as they would find a way how to do it again. They would again throw rocks under our feet and block us again,” Matovic told a news conference held in the parliament on Thursday. He assured the public that Ordinary People will stand in the upcoming early parliamentary elections. “We will figure it out, we will stand in the elections, succeed in the elections and decide the elections,” Matovic declared.
Matovic applied for registration of a political movement under the name Ordinary People and Independent Personalities on Friday, October 28. On the same day, the non-parliamentary party Slovak National Coalition led by former SNS deputy Vitazoslav Moric changed its name to Ordinary People and had it registered at the Interior Ministry. Matovic opines that Moric played the role of a straw man in the name change, while practically all leaders of parliamentary parties would welcome getting Ordinary People out of the game ahead of the elections. Matovic added that it could have been SDKU-DS leader Mikulas Dzurinda, SNS leader Jan Slota as well as SMER-SD Chairman Robert Fico who asked Moric to do this stunt. “He is on good terms will all of them,” Matovic commented.
The Ordinary People leader reminded that already before the 2010 general elections, a car they used for distributing leaflets was set on fire. “More plagues will continue, those plagues will come from all sides, there will for sure be dirty tricks,” he said, adding that he finds the attacks to be reflection of fear of political elite for their own positions. „They attach importance to us and are afraid we would be successful in the elections“, he said.
Matovic added that the change of name of Moric’s party was carried out after expelling all members from the party but himself. After that, Moric convened a congress, submitted his own proposal to change the party’s name and approved it. Moric claims that by changing his party’s name to Ordinary People, he wanted to contribute to calming down the political scene.
Matovic says he is establishing his own party in response to the failure to amend the election law to allow people who do not want to be candidates of a political party to stand for election to parliament. He wanted anyone who can gather 5,000 signatures and pay a hundred euro deposit to be able to run, but the bill had no chance.
Four members of the ‘Ordinary People’ group made it to parliament in 2010, on the party list of the neoliberal SaS party, although they were the last four names on the candidate list with 150 candidates. Also in the March 2012 early parliamentary elections, Matovic wants to be last name on the party list. The group began collecting signatures needed to register the party over the summer. They eventually managed to get more than 13,000 signatures, more than the necessary 10,000 to apply for registration.
SITA