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Fico: Election Winner Should Decide on Who in Next Government
Tuesday 20 April 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, April 20 (TASR) - The strongest coalition party, Smer-SD, wants to keep in line with the practice established after the 2006 general election - that should it be the winner of the June 12 general election it will form the Government and decide on who will be its coalition partner (if they need one). This is according to Smer-SD chairman and Prime Minister Robert Fico, speaking at a news conference on Tuesday.
He repeated that his party has the ambition to win the election and form the cabinet. That's because, as he stressed, the government driven by a strong mandate is the best choice when it comes to finding the way out of the economic crisis.
Fico called the attempts of the opposition (right-wing) parties to create a five-party governing bloc to be legitimate, adding that Smer-SD is "ready for this". However, he said, such a coalition would bring "remarkable political instability", as parties in the Opposition Five have diametrically opposed views on some issues. He also pointed on the fact that all of those opposition parties that ever made it to Parliament have had their parliamentary caucuses broken up.
He noted that a coalition of the strongest opposition party SDKU-DS plus the Christian Democrat KDH and ethnic-Hungarian SMK (in power between 1998-2006 - ed. note) would represent a return to the values they share, which could be harmful to Slovakia. Fico is convinced that SDKU would definitely be considering privatisation of strategically-important enterprises, and would also make changes in the authority of the Bureau for Regulation of Network Industries (URSO). "And we can then look forward to the re-introduction of fees in healthcare sector," he added.
According to Fico, KDH would be giving preferential treatment to private schools at the expense of public schools, and the presence of SMK in the Government would kill the existence of the State Language Act. Smer-SD chairman also said that SMK leader Pal Csaky is a proxy of the soon-to-be Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban, which would weaken the national and statehood interests of Slovakia.
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