Prime Minister: SaS Party Is Risk to Democracy

The premier believes it’s right that a public debate on this matter will take place in Parliament. He supports Parliament in such a debate and also in taking any decision that will be needed, although he added that he doesn’t want to impinge on the consciences of MPs and doesn’t know what conclusion they will adopt.

“The public has the right to know that SaS is a risk to democracy because it has proven this through specific steps,” stated Fico. New information from members of the former Military Defence Intelligence was revealed during an extraordinary meeting on Friday (February 9). It stated that innocent people were wiretapped in order to find out what opinions they had about SaS.

“It’s a scandal that has no equal. It’s a scandal that concerns democracy. I want to emphasise that we’ve never had this problem. No one can accuse us of taking steps against democracy, but if there’s a party that doesn’t have a problem with abusing its instruments of power, such as wiretapping, for its own protection, this is something absolutely unacceptable in my world of a politician,” he said.

Fico also reproached SaS for the fact that MP Jozef Rajtar’s assistant, as a bank employee, looked at private bank accounts; that SaS chief Richard Sulik, when head of parliament, limited the time for speeches by opposition MPs; and that the party under the government led by Iveta Radicova (2010-12) attempted to check the voting of coalition MPs in a secret ballot for selecting a prosecutor-general in parliament, eventually turning this vote into a public one.

On a proposal of Peter Suca (Smer-SD), most of the House voted on Tuesday that they would deal with Galko’s alleged abuse of VOS on Wednesday afternoon (February 14). The proposal came after Parliament discussed the modernisation of the Slovak army at an extraordinary session.