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Urbani Leads 'Small Party' Leaders in Condemning Fico's Tip to Voters
Wednesday 24 March 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, March 24 (TASR) - Slovakia's tiny political parties hoping to enter parliament after the June 12 election cry foul against what they see as discrimination by the media offering them not enough time to present their programmes and most recently the PM Robert Fico's urging the electorate not to vote for the parties scoring under 5-percent support in public opinion polls.
"Are we living in a law-abiding and democratic state when three months to go before parliamentary elections, premier calls on citizens to only choose those parties that have above 5 percent in opinion polls," said independent lawmaker Milan Urbani, who is chairman of one such party – Alliance for Europe of Nations (AZEN).
"AZEN repudiates any discrimination in any respect... Voter should have free choice," said Urbani, ex-deputy chairman at LS-HZDS who is touting his new political party with deputy chair Zdenka Kramplova.
The Union - Party for Slovakia, which features former chief of Free Forum Zuzana Martinakova, Presov Mayor Pavel Hagyari and Branislav Zahradnik, has rejected references to the party as being a satellite of opposition SDKU-DS. "Political party Union - Party for Slovakia is no satellite of SDKU-DS nor of any other political party," reads a press release of the Union.
On Tuesday, Premier said he hopes that people will not select political parties in the June parliamentary elections that have less than 5 percent in opinion polls. "That is a useless waste of votes," he said. [In Slovak elections, votes cast for parties that fall below 5 percent are fed back into the overall vote count and given on a proportional basis to those parties that did make the 5-percent threshold. - ed. note]
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