BRATISLAVA, December 11, (WEBNOVINY) — Current and former Slovak Minister of Finance Ivan Miklos (SDKU-DS) and Jan Pociatek (SMER-SD) met on Saturday noon in a political debate program on the public Slovak Radio. According to opposition MP Jan Pociatek, the situation around the election of a new general prosecutor in parliament testifies how firm the current coalition is and how its members trust each other. „When a government is prepared to remove one of the achievements of the post-Velvet Revolution period, which is a secret ballot, only because they fail to agree among themselves and when you do not believe each other, for me it is scandalous,“ he said in the debate. As he pointed out, the coalition effort, after it failed four times to elect their candidate, to introduce a public vote does not indicate they are promoting some democratic element. „On the contrary, to me it seems that they must blackmail their own MPs, to achieve what they want to achieve,“ he said. According to him, however, the opposition SMER-SD does not want to topple the government in this way. „It would be a rather illegitimate way,“ he said.
Pociatek „absolutely“ rejected there exist any deals with some dissident MPs of the ruling coalition, who in the secret ballot did not support the joint coalition candidate for prosecutor general. He said backstage rumors are not based on reality that it was a result of corruption or extortion, as every change of government brings with an end of many profitable and lucrative business deals, such as PPP projects or broad gauge railway. „I think someone invents these scenarios because he wants to somehow defend the change of a secret ballot to a public vote, to give it a story to make it more easily sold to the public,“ he said.
Finance Minister Ivan Miklos sees nothing nonstandard in the election of the new prosecutor general. As pointed out, a public vote is a quite common form of election in many countries and also in Slovakia. For example, a parliamentary no confidence vote in members of the Cabinet is a public vote. „The fact is that the level of corruption at the time when Robert Fico was Prime Minister of Slovakia grew to enormous proportions never seen in the past and it can be an eminent interest of some to avoid a full and proper investigation of those things that happened here,“ Miklos said.
SITA