Slovak News Back to the news
Radicova: No Reason Why Right Shouldn't Reach Coalition Agreement
Tuesday 11 May 2010 Zoom in | Print page
Bratislava, May 11 (TASR) - SDKU-DS election leader Iveta Radicova told TASR on Tuesday in an interview that she sees no reason why the right-wing parties shouldn't be able to reach an agreement after the June 12 parliamentary elections and form a Government.
According to Radicova, SDKU-DS has similiar experiences from the past. "The so-called first Mikulas Dzurinda's government was a coalition made up from left- and right-wing parties. [It was debatable exactly how many parties that coalition consisted of. The umbrella party SDK actually had five parties (KDH, DU, DS, Greens and SDSS), plus there was SMK, Party of Civic Understanding/SOP and the original Party of the Democratic Left/SDL - ed. note.] As far as reaching any kind of consensus went, those were tough times. Hence, we've already been there and done that," said Radicova, adding that the current situation will be a lot easier to deal with. When asked why the centre-right wing parties haven't formed any coalition prior to the election, Radicova replied that she thinks that "each of these parties believes it can gather enough votes on its own".
She pointed out that it's difficult to estimate the effects such an alliance would yield, as similar affiliations proved to weaken some political parties in the past. The problem is, Radicova said, that parties that joined election alliances often lost their identity. "We engaged our partners in a number of talks about forming an election coalition in order to prevent the right-wing votes from getting splintered. Yet, our partners chose to run on their own, and there's nothing for us to do but respect that decision," said Radicova. She doesn't rule out a possible integration of right-wing parties in the future, however.
Unlike Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) Chairman Jan Figel, Radicova excluded any prospect of forming a government with Smer-SD. "All these 'ifs' and 'maybes' are off the mark now, because we said unequivocally that we won't form a government with any of current Coalition parties under any circumstances whatsoever. It would be the same thing as forming a government with HZDS in 1998," said Radicova, according to whom "a clear plan B for SDKU-DS is staying in Opposition".
All rights reserved. Any publishing or further dissemination of press releases and photographs from TASR's resources without TASR's prior written approval constitutes a violation of the Copyrights Act.
