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SMK's Top Officials Step Down, Party Congress Due in September
Sunday 13 June 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, June 13 (TASR) - Ethnic-Hungarian SMK party chairman Pal Csaky announced on Sunday morning that the party's entire leadership is stepping down over SMK's poor result in the general election, TASR learnt on the same day.
In line with unofficial results of Saturday's general election, SMK received a mere 4.33 percent of votes, failing to break the 5-percent threshold needed for the party to make it into Parliament.
"We're not happy about the result, it's a visceral loss for SMK and obviously consequences must be drawn now," said Csaky, noting that "all of us in the leadership are stepping down as of today (Sunday)".
According to Csaky, a session of SMK's country-wide council will be called next week, when a decision as to how to go on will be adopted. At the session, the outgoing leadership will probably be charged with holding an interim leadership, before an SMK congress takes place at the beginning of September and new personnel measures are taken.
"We suggest that we'll continue to be active in political activities as an extra-parliamentary party, while the gist of our activities will be transferred to the area of regional and local politics," he said. SMK maintains official party status based on a plus-3 percent result.
Csaky also thanked everyone who went to cast their vote and congratulated the parties that have made it into the House.
It is the first time that SMK has not made it to Parliament since the party was formed in 1998.
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