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Fico: Coalition Agreement in Force Until Election Campaign Begins
Monday 28 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 28 (TASR) - The decision to take the Environment Ministry away from the Slovak National Party (SNS) and put it under the remit of Smer-SD was a flagrant violation of the Coalition Agreement but it was absolutely necessary, Prime Minister Robert Fico has told TASR.
Fico claimed that if he hadn't taken action he would have had to take the full responsibility for what happened at the ministry.
Despite this conflict, Fico described the Coalition as a success story. "It works absolutely fine and I'm very glad about such political stability," he said, adding that the coalition parties have managed to harmonise their interests during their 3.5-year-long period in power despite having different opinions. "I don't remember any huge conflict about values between us in any situation. There were some troublesome situations, which is part of politics, but we dealt with them," he said.
Fico corrected information in the media that the Coalition Agreement terminates at the beginning of 2010, stating that it will only end at the beginning of the election campaign. He noted that there will be another two parliamentary sessions before the start of official campaigning and support for some legislative proposals won't be possible without a functional agreement. "We're going on, we'll behave in a correct way in relation to LS-HZDS and SNS and we aren't interested in terminating this co-operation earlier than the scheduled date," he said.
The premier stressed, however, that there may be cases in which voting against a coalition partner would be to Slovakia's benefit. As an example, he mentioned the setting-up of the Specialised Criminal Court and the law on proving the origin of property.
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