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SPF Board Now Able to Operate Without Opposition Representatives
Wednesday 03 March 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, March 3 (TASR) - The Slovak Land Fund (SPF) board will be able to carry out its duties even without Opposition representatives, this is the import of a piece of legislation that was enacted by Parliament on Wednesday.
The initiative, as proposed by governing-coalition Smer-SD legislator Magda Kosutova, was included in an amendment to the Act on Land Ownership Rights, following Opposition reluctance to bring forward its nominees due to reservations about SPF's activities.
The board, whose role is to supervise SPF's activities, is supposed to have 11 members in total. Six of these are nominated by the Government, and the other five by the parliamentary committee for agriculture - three coalition nominees, and two opposition. Parliament has to approve all nominations before the board members are appointed.
All the former board members were dismissed last year over scandalous land transfers in the High Tatra mountains.
"The importance of fulfilling SPF's legally-designated roles requires that its board, as the SPF's supreme body, be operational even if in Parliament there arises ... when some political parties don't make use of their right to put forward their candidates for board members," according to Kosutova's justification of the legislation.
"The Opposition is refusing to nominate these people, despite having an opportunity to carry out checks at a very high level. In this way they are keeping us from commencing SPF's work in resolving matters that are becoming more and more urgent," said Fico, highlighting restitution claims and decisions on large state construction projects as examples.
Opposition parties said earlier, however, that they aren't willing to nominate their candidates for SPF board members until the end of the current electoral term. "We've agreed that because those (members) who were nominated (last time) were misused for political purposes and for hushing up what happened in the Fund (the land-transfer scandals)," explained ethnic-Hungarian SMK party caucus leader Gyula Bardos.
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