SaS and OLaNO-NOVA Set up Opposition Council
Bratislava, May 27 (TASR) – The two strongest Opposition parties Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) and Ordinary People-NOVA (OLaNO-NOVA) signed a contract on the establishment of the Opposition Council at a press conference in Bratislava on Friday.
The Council aims to boost the cooperation within the Opposition so that after the next general election these parties are prepard to be a government coalition.
“It has happened that SaS and OLaNO-NOVA have become the strongest Opposition caucuses with 40 MPs altogether. We’ve known each other for years. We’re the most experienced parties on the opposite side of the political spectrum,” said SaS leader Richard Sulik at the press conference.
Indubitably, neither of these parties is under the influence of oligarchs and patrons. “We do politics in an honest way, but we aren’t flawless,” noted MEP Sulik.
Sulik said that the Opposition Council will convene once every month and, in special circumstances, at the request of one of caucus leaders immediately.
According to OLaNO-NOVA leader Igor Matovic, many people were engrossed by hopelessness after the 2016 general election. “These people need hope and they want to believe that the ‘government of oligarchs’ won’t last forever. If we want to be a responsible Opposition, we need to take this step,” explained Matovic, who first entered Parliament under the SaS banner in 2010 but left shortly thereafter.
Sulik declared that the Opposition Council isn’t an alternative to a shadow government but an assumption vis-a-vis further cooperation. Other Opposition parties won’t be members of the council at this point. “However, it doesn’t mean we’ve excluded the others, but this is the foundation,” said Sulik, adding that the far-right Kotleba-People’s Party Our Slovakia (LSNS) won’t ever be invited to join the Council.
Matovic said that Boris Kollar-We Are Family party was set up shortly befor the general election. “Our relationship has yet to take shape,” he added.
The agreement stipulates that both parties will inform each other about their proposals of new laws to be submitted to Parliament, act jointly when initiating extraordinary parliamentary sessions and coordinate their outputs for the media.
