BRATISLAVA, September 19, (WEBNOVINY) – Speaker of Parliament and leader of the SaS party which initiated the referendum Richard Sulik considers the referendum a success as it mobilized one million voters, in spite of being invalid. Sulik stated this on air of the public-service Slovak Television on Sunday noon. Deputy Chairman of the strongest opposition party the SMER-SD Marek Madaric was not surprised by the turnout. He claims that “to reach twenty percent is not much, especially when there was no anti-campaign”. Madaric added that the referendum was just a marketing and political trick and had the SaS party delivered the petition for the referendum after the June elections, EUR 7.2 million could have been saved. Sulik argued that it was “well invested money”, as “democracy has certain costs”. He believes that the referendum represents a “strong political commitment for the coalition”. At the beginning, the referendum was a marketing operation as well as part of election campaign, but when the president announced the referendum, it stopped to be an issue of the SaS party, explained the head of lawmakers. Madaric opposed by saying that eighty percent of voters did not care about the questions in the referendum, or were against. Sulik remarked that 880,000 people supported the SMER-SD party in the June elections, while more than 900,000 want to curb deputy immunity from prosecution, as the results of the plebiscite show. Madaric reacted by saying that the two matters are not related.
Sulik considers the minimum turnout of the electorate in order for the result of a referendum to be considered valid as unnecessarily high. He could not say whether the ruling coalition would try to lower it, as for that, a constitutional majority of ninety deputies in the 150-member parliament would be needed. The ruling coalition has 79 votes. The opposition deputy said that he would not support reducing the minimum turnout as the time for it has not yet come.
“It was polite to wait for the people’s opinion,” said Madaric with regard to the parliamentary debate on curbing deputy immunity from prosecution. Lawmakers discussed the proposal at the September session, but postponed it for October. “There has to be a joint draft of the coalition and opposition,” he requested. Sulik appreciated the fact that the vote on the proposal was postponed for after the plebiscite, and added that he wants to resolve the issue and believes that Prime Minister Iveta Radicova will manage talks on the proposal with the opposition, too. In order to limit the immunity, a constitutional majority of ninety votes will be required.
SITA