SaS Offers 18 Enhancements for Electoral System
Bratislava, December 7 (TASR) – The Opposition Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party has offered 18 enhancements for the Slovak electoral system based on three main principles in order to ensure what the majority wants in a fair way, said SaS leader Richard Sulik and SaS MP Martin Klus at a press conference on Wednesday.
The first principle states that elections of individuals should be based on the majoritarian system, whereas elections of a collective should be based on a proportional system. The second principle talks about a two-round system for majoritarian elections and a one-round system for proportional elections. The last principle presupposes that an electorate should be identical with an area in which legal norms adopted by elected legislators will be valid.
As part of the election package, SaS suggests focusing on the transparency of election campaigns instead of setting financial limits on them, to elect regional governors and mayors in the two-round system, to merge the presidential election with the election to the European Parliament, to hold all elections on Fridays instead of Saturdays and to accord voters a day off for their participation. They also propose scrapping Constitution Day (September 1) from the list of bank holidays to compensate employers for the aforementioned day off.
Furthermore, the liberals propose to suspend the right of prisoners to vote while serving their sentences, to introduce the moratorium only on the day of the vote, to expand and to make voting by post easier, to ban legislators from performing some executive functions at the same time, to render the results of referenda obligatory and to scrap the minimum turnout in order for a local referendum to be valid.
“The electoral system is the basis of a functioning democracy. The current electoral system is functioning; we don’t want to destroy it, but to enhance it,” explained Sulik.
Apart from the changes, SaS would like to preserve the following rules: the financing of political parties via state contributions, Slovakia as a single constituency, the 5-percent threshold for general elections and the single chamber parliament.
