Poll: 63 percent of Slovaks Favour Scrapping Meciar's Amnesties

Poll: 63 percent of Slovaks Favour Scrapping Meciar's Amnesties

Bratislava, March 1 (TASR) – Almost two thirds (63 percent) of Slovaks are in favour of scrapping the amnesties issued in 1998 by prime minister and acting president Vladimir Meciar concerning the 1995 kidnapping of then president Michal Kovac’s son Michal and a thwarted referendum of 1997, according to a Focus agency poll published on Wednesday.

As many as 32 percent in the poll firmly believed that the amnesties should be declared null and void, while another 31 percent were inclined to seeing them lifted.

Conversely, 8 percent of the respondents were strongly opposed to cancelling the amnesties, while 12 percent leaned towards leaving them intact.

At the same time 17 percent didn’t have a clear opinion on the issue.

When it came to age, it was discovered that 53 percent of people aged 18-24 favour scrapping the amnesties, while one third of this group wasn’t able to formulate an unambiguous opinion on the matter. Meanwhile, two thirds of respondents aged above 35 would like to see the amnesties revoked.

The survey also revealed differences in opinions that were related to the respondents’ education. While only 55 percent of respondents with only a basic education were for lifting the amnesties, support for scrapping them among people with a university education reached 76 percent.

In terms of sympathisers of individual political parties, the scrapping of Meciar’s amnesties was supported by 77 percent of Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) voters, followed by those of OLaNO-NOVA (75 percent), We Are Family (65 percent), Most-Hid (63 percent), Kotleba-People’s Party Our Slovakia (62 percent), the Slovak National Party (60 percent) and Smer-SD (59 percent).

[The Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) during Meciar’s reign was suspected of being involved in the abduction as well as the related murder of former police investigator Robert Remias, who served as a link to a key witness in the case. – ed. note]