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Interior Minister Kalinak Defends Police Work
Wednesday 13 January 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, January 13 (TASR) - The Opposition is entitled to seek the removal of a Government member, but its current initiative is part of a pre-election campaign, said Interior Minister Robert Kalinak on Wednesday in reaction to the Christian Democrats'(KDH) announcement earlier in the day to that effect.
The three Opposition parties in Parliament are about to begin gathering the 30 MPs' signatures needed to convene a special session of Parliament to seek Kalinak's ouster.
The announcement came from KDH chief Jan Figel after Opposition parliamentary parties (including also SDKU-DS and SMK) discussed no-confidence motion in Kalinak based on the recent explosives fiasco. In the incident police left behind explosives in the luggage of an unsuspecting passenger as part of an airport security exercise in Poprad (Presov region).
The explosives are said to have been seized later by Irish police on a tip from Slovakia at the passenger's apartment in Dublin. As a result of the miscommunication, the man was arrested as a terrorism suspect. The case turned into an international embarrassment, with Kalinak apologising to Irish justice minister Dermot Ahern for the incident – as well as to the Slovak man living in Ireland.
Kalinak defended the work of police saying its workload is heavy, and routine mistakes can therefore take place. "The human factor ... mistakes occur from individual failures," he said.
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