Ex-Agriculture Minister for OLaNO Addresses Open Letter to Matovic

Bratislava, August 24 (TASR) – Former agriculture minister and now OLaNO MP Jan Micovsky on Tuesday posted  an open letter to Finance Minister and OLaNO leader Igor Matovic on Facebook in which he voiced his concerns that OLaNO appears to be drifting away from its anti-graft principles.

At the same time Micovsky criticised various decisions, especially those concerning staff, by his successor at the helm of the Agriculture Ministry.

“I handed over the post to incumbent Agriculture Minister Samuel Vlcan [an OLaNO nominee] in the belief that the transplantation of decency into the sick Agriculture Ministry would continue. However, I can’t view what began to take place at the ministry after my departure as decent,” stated Micovsky in the letter.

In the ex-minister’s opinion, moves carried out by his successor up to this point have dishonoured the anti-corruption ethos of OLaNO. “These decisions insult people who joined [OLaNO] and who see the moral restoration of the country as their goal. To remain silent in this situation would make me a coward, so I won’t remain silent. Please don’t be silent, either, the movement that you founded doesn’t deserve that,” Micovsky told Matovic.

According to Micovsky, Vlcan’s decisions have cast doubt on “everything”. “Many of my former colleagues are being incomprehensibly dismissed from their jobs by the new minister, and in an undignified manner. It’s as if their professional profiles hadn’t been formed on anti-corruption battlefields – which they often were – but instead as if they were the very engineers of the moral decay of the previous era,” remarked the ex-minister.