Sulik: We Are Ready to Hold Talks on Shadow Cabinet

Sulik: We Are Ready to Hold Talks on Shadow Cabinet

To date, opposition parties Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) and OLaNO-NOVA have been finding their current activities more important than forming of a shadow cabinet, SaS leader and MEP Richard Sulik told TASR on Thursday.

“Now it’s time, in addition to demonstrations and criticism, to set up a shadow cabinet, to form a compact professional unit that would represent an alternative,” OLaNO-NOVA MP Daniel Lipsic told Dennik N daily earlier this week. SaS and OLaNO-NOVA set up the Opposition Council in May.

SaS, OLaNO-NOVA and We Are Family mentioned possibly forming a Shadow Cabinet shortly after the March 5 general election. According to Sulik, the parties would like to staff this Cabinet with high profile, publicly known people, who might not necessarily be MPs. “It is a possibility considered by three of us, i.e. SaS, OLaNO-NOVA and We Are Family. I know no details at the moment. However, we admit that such a shadow cabinet might be formed in several weeks or months,” Sulik said back in March.

Meanwhile, an Opposition Council was founded in order to strengthen cooperation between the OLaNO and SaS.

“The situation has developed so that SaS and OLaNO-NOVA are the strongest Opposition caucuses, we have 40 MPs in total. We have known each other for years, we are the most experienced parties in the Opposition spectrum. A generational change among politicians has progressed,” said Sulik, who, like OLaNO leader Igor Matovic, began his Slovak parliamentary career in 2010.

Prime Minister Robert Fico and Smer-SD also created a Shadow Cabinet that was functional between 2011-12, during the short-lived government of Iveta Radicova. Many members of this Cabinet became ministers after the 2012 general election win. “I expect that the shadow cabinet will monitor the Government’s agenda, oppose it and suggest alternative solutions,” said Fico back then.