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Meciar: Everyone in HZDS Is Free to Speak Their Mind
Tuesday 29 December 2009 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, December 29 (TASR) - LS-HZDS enjoys an extraordinarily effective internal mechanism of democracy that allows every member to speak his or her mind, LS-HZDS chairman Vladimir Meciar told TASR on Tuesday.
"This internal democracy of ours goes to a much larger extent than in other political parties. We don't have a centralised decision-making process or a centralised anything, we respect every opinion," said Meciar.
Meciar pointed out that internal democratic procedures prevent even him - the LS-HZDS chairman - from taking direct action against any party functionary. "If I want to hold, say, a district chairman responsible for something, there are procedures to follow. I can't appoint or dismiss members at will, and I certainly can't adopt a directive approach," he claimed, adding that former HZDS member Milan Urbani was ousted from the party by a vote of the Presidium.
"Dishonesty against one's own political party never pays," commented Meciar on Urbani's dismissal, as well as that of Zdenka Kramplova. He added that Urbani had to leave HZDS because of the "many sins" he committed.
"There was the donation scandal that he was involved in, a kind of scandal people lose their party memberships over, yet he withstood it," said Meciar, adding that the last straw was Urbani's involvement with the European Democratic Party, in which he nominated people.
"You can't sit on two chairs at once, can't work for two sides. So he who wanted to sit on two chairs fell into the gap between them," claimed Meciar. According to him, he tried to reason with Urbani in a friendly way at the time. "And not just me, everyone told him to give it up, take that step out of there, come out straight and stay in one party only. He refused. Then I told him - if you can't come to an honest end, we'll come to one for you. We can't afford to mislead people," said Meciar.
Urbani represents a closed chapter for Meciar. "I don't care about him. He's gone and I speak no ill of the dead. He's out of the picture now," he claimed.
Meciar reacted to Urbani's claim that the chairman no longer governs the party and that there are unnamed individuals behind the scenes exerting influence over the party leadership. "Why did he want to stay here if the situation had come to such a pass? Why? He wanted to stay in a party leadership controlled by these so-called mysterious forces. Why?"
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