Danko: Matovic Ripe for Straightjacket

Danko: Matovic Ripe for Straightjacket

Bratislava, September 13 (TASR) – New parliamentary Rules of Procedure won’t stop people such as Igor Matovic (OLaNO-NOVA), as Matovic is ripe for a straightjacket – but such a measure cannot be included in the Rules of Procedures, parliamentary chair Andrej Danko (Slovak National Party/SNS) said at a press conference on Tuesday.

Danko also called Matovic’s political movement OLaNO a “sect” and declared that current Opposition leaders are clinically incapable of governing the state.

“Igor Matovic can be stopped only by a straightjacket and I can’t put that into the Rules of Procedure. There are types of people who can be stopped only by the straightjacket. And specifically, this Mr. M., the chair of the Ordinary People, is that kind of person. But that, however, is too much for the Rules of Procedure,” said Danko.

Danko conceded that he had attempted to provoke Matovic earlier in the day with his speech – in which he alluded to Matovic’s upbringing – in order to make Matovic unmask himself and show his true colors. “You could have heard how Igor Matovic shouted that the parliamentary chair is a dirtbag and how he would destroy me. That is his real face and his brand of politics,” he added.

The SNS chair also maintains that his speech came only in response to Matovic’s past verbal attacks, when Matovic called Danko a ‘skunk, who stinks up every place wherever he goes’. “I won’t let such a hoodlum of Igor Matovic’s calibre just sling insults at me,” he said.

Danko expects the amended Rules of Procedure, which he has sponsored, to usher in more cultivated and effective parliamentary deliberations – although he conceded that it won’t prevent the exchange of barbs and verbal jabs among legislators.

The SNS chair doesn’t rule out the possibility of making changes to his amendment in second reading, although he fails to imagine what kind of Opposition he should join up with in order to seek a broad consensus. “Broad consensus? With whom? The Opposition is nonexistent, after all,” he claimed. [There are four parties in Opposition: SaS (Freedom and Solidarity) had Matovic on its caucus in 2010 in an alliance that lasted almost a year and has 21 seats; Matovic’s OLaNo has 19; far-right Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia has 14 and is ostracised by the other Opposition; and Boris Kollar – We Are Family, which has eight MPs but is isolated from the other parties for the time being – ed.note]

“I won’t keep secret my intention to fight the clusters of random people hiding behind sects that are calling themselves ‘movements’ [an allusion to OLaNO] and who are being taken advantage of by their leader, who fails to grasp the concept of political responsibility. I don’t think that the state can be governed by private “s.r.o.’s” [firms] and people such as the leaders of current opposition parties,” he concluded.