Slovak News Back to the news
SaS and Most-Hid: Fico's Cut-Party-Budget Initiative Endlessly Populist
Monday 07 June 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, June 7 (TASR) - Extra-parliamentary parties Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) and Most-Hid, both of which have a chance to make it to Parliament on June 12, have rejected the idea of changing the legislation in order to facilitate the allocation of roughly €4 million from money designed for political parties to cover the damage in flood-hit areas.
The intention to amend the law on political parties was on Monday presented by Premier Robert Fico (Smer-SD). He said it should be the amounts allocated for 2010 based on parties' results that should be transferred to aid the flooded areas.
"It seems that Robert Fico's populism is boundless. This money represents legal incomes that parties need to keep themselves running," said SaS leader Richard Sulik in response to Fico's suggestions. At the same time, he called on representatives of the strongest ruling Smer-SD to give up what he called hundreds of millions of Slovak crowns that they got in return for parliamentary seats and chairs in Government in 2006.
"Members and supporters of SaS will contribute to financial collections for flooded areas from their own pockets, but we're not interested in presenting it in the media. We won't make use of people's bad luck in order to win points in the political campaign," said Sulik.
According to Most-Hid spokesperson Nora Czuczorova, this new Slovak-Hungarian political party (established only a year ago) describes Fico's initiative as populism ad infinitum.
"Now's the time when the bad and spendthrift politics of the governing coalition becomes evident. It should be the Premier's Reserve Fund that should be used for purposes of solidarity in situations like floods," she said, adding that the flood damage could easily have been covered by what was lost in the scandalous sale of Slovak emission quotas and in the tender for the toll-collection system.
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
