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Gov't Office: TIS Report Tailor-made for Campaigns of Right-wing Parties
Tuesday 27 April 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, April 27 (TASR) - The current report drawn up by Transparency International Slovensko (TIS) assessing the attempts of parliamentary parties and individual MPs to fight corruption is tailor-made for the campaigns of SDKU-DS and other right-wing opposition parties in the run-up to the general election June 12.
This is according to a statement provided to TASR by the Government Office in response to the report published by TIS earlier on Tuesday, suggesting that over the now-ending electoral term the right-wing parties now in Opposition have performed better when it comes to supporting anti-corruption legislation in Parliament than the ruling parties did.
"TIS has long been personally interlinked with right-wing parties," reads the statement, which goes on to say that TIS for a long time has been "unjustifiably attacking the current Cabinet, while it used to show indulgence towards the government led by Mikulas Dzurinda -- which is not surprising, given that it was led by wife of then-state secretary and the current SDKU-DS election candidate" [Miroslav Beblavy and his wife Emilia Sicakova-Beblava - ed. note].
LS-HZDS MP Jozef Halecky, whose party ended up worst out of all six parliamentary parties in terms of anti-corruption legislation support in the report, said his party in many cases voted upon previous intra-party agreement. Halecky himself ended up only one place above the bottom of the table with rankings of individual MPs. "I'm explaining this to myself by my frequent absence on voting due to health and personal reasons. Perhaps that's why my ranking is low," he said. His party colleague Tibor Cabaj, who is also Parliamentary Vice-chairman, said that TIS is so unimportant that he doesn't care about what it says.
TIS evaluated the attitudes of parties and individual MPs vis-a-vis a total of 25 legislative proposals, of which eight weren't passed. TIS chairman Gabriel Sipos explained that they assessed MPs who were present for votes on at least 13 pieces of anti-corruption legislation. If lawmakers abstained, they were given a neutral (zero) assessment; if they voted against such laws, they received a negative mark; while if they supported anti-corruption legislation, the mark was positive.
The assessment report stated that out of all six parliamentary parties, the opposition Christian Democrats (KDH) have made the biggest contribution to the fight against corruption over the current four-year electoral term, followed by the other two opposition parties - SDKU-DS and the ethnic-Hungarian SMK. Next came the coalition trio, namely the Slovak National Party (SNS), the strongest ruling Smer-SD, and LS-HZDS, which ended up bottom when it comes to anti-corruption activities. As for individual MPs, Pavol Freso (SDKU) received the best rating, followed by Julius Brocka and Daniel Lipsic (both KDH). Conversely, HZDS MPs Tibor Cabaj, Jozef Halecky and Marian Halko had the worst records.
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