BRATISLAVA, March 23, (WEBNOVINY) — On Friday, President Ivan Gasparovic convened the opening session of the newly elected Slovak Parliament for 10:00 A.M. on April 4. The first point of the agenda will be taking the oath of office of the elected parliamentary deputies and their substitutes. The main task for MPs at this constituent meeting will be electing the speaker and deputy speakers of parliament, formation of parliamentary committees and election of their leadership. At the constituent meeting, parliamentary parties also create their caucuses. Until the new speaker of parliament is elected, Pavol Hrusovsky (KDH) as the speaker of the old parliament will preside over the session.
The winner of elections, SMER-Social Democracy will nominate Pavol Paska as the new speaker of parliament. The Social Democrats will also nominate two deputy speakers of parliament, while the opposition will nominate other two. Based on an agreement among leaders of five center-right opposition parties, one of them should be KDH chairman Jan Figel and the other Erika Jurinova from the party Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OLaNO) led by Igor Matovic. Since pursuant to the Constitution parliament elects its speaker and deputy speakers as well as heads of parliamentary committees in a secret ballot, it cannot be guaranteed that all MPs will respect the political agreement on nominations for these positions and that they would actually be elected.
Of the nineteen parliamentary committees, the opposition can nominate heads of nine. They are the Committee on Economy, Agriculture, Foreign Affairs, and the Committee for Human Rights and Minorities and five control committees. These include the Committee on Conflicts of Interest, Committee overseeing the military intelligence and counter intelligence services ad the SIS, and Committee that Examines Decisions of the National Security Authority. The remaining ten committees will be headed by nominees of governing SMER-SD. The opposition has so far not agreed on the division of some posts, as several parties wish to nominate heads of same committees.
Based on results of elections on March 10, there will be six parties in the 150-member parliament for the next four-year term, with 83 mandates held by the center-left SMER-SD and 67 mandates controlled by five center-right parties. Christian Democrats (KDH) ended second and will have 16 mandates. Third was the party OLaNO of Igor Matovic also with 16 mandates. MOST-HID, the party promoting cooperation of ethic Hungarian minority and the Slovak majority will have 13 representatives in parliament. Next is the SDKU-DS of Prime Minister Iveta Radicova (who did not stand in these elections) with 11 mandates and last was the neo-liberal party SaS will also have 11 mandates.
SITA