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Horsky: Proposal on Cutting MPs' Immunity May Be Mere Populism
Thursday 15 July 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, July 15 (TASR) - Only if Prime Minister Iveta Radicova's constitutional law proposal on restricting an MP's immunity gains certain support in advance from the Opposition is it viable, political analyst Michal Horsky told TASR on Thursday.
"If it is submitted to Parliament without preliminary agreement with the Opposition and without a wide-ranging public discussion, this is just pure populism," said Horsky, arguing that it could be an effort to cover over some unkept pre-election promises.
"If the coalition doesn't carry out a broad discussion on this topic in the media and doesn't make preliminary agreements with part of the political Opposition, this is only an effort to toss the hot potato represented by the immunity issue into the hands of former prime minister Robert Fico and Smer-SD party," claims Horsky.
Political analyst Rastislav Toth notes that it is important for all coalition MPs to vote for the bill if they want to adopt it. He adds that "such laws are most easily pushed through right at the beginning, when MPs aren't oriented enough." Toth added that it is necessary to discuss the legislation in individual caucuses first.
"It's necessary to publish in the media what it is about, so that all party caucuses have a say on it - what they want and what concerns they have," says Toth. Important, too, is to watch all the MPs amendments closely in the process of adopting the bill. "Two years ago, Czech parliament was also adopting such a law and there were so many changes that when they approved the law at last, they found out that the (MPs) immunity was even wider than before," he noted.
The proposal to restrict the MPs immunity only to voting and statements made in Parliament was approved at the extraordinary Government session on Thursday.
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