Pollak: Political Parties Musn't Stoop to Extremists' Level

Bratislava, March 9 (TASR) – People who deny spiritual, human and moral values for which people regardless of their ethnic minority or skin colour were killed in WWII have arrived in the legislative body, said Government Proxy for Roma Communities Peter Pollak in a statement on Wednesday.

[The far-right Kotleba – People’s Party Our Slovakia won 8.04 percent of the votes in Saturday’s general election. – ed. note]

“They don’t recognise the victims of the Jewish and Roma Holocausts and they call into question the values and traditions on which European society is built,” stated Pollak.

According to Pollak, the political and cultural heritage of the country’s forefathers is now in danger. “If we don’t respond adequately to such a new situation, the group of adherents of extremist opinions will grow” he stated.

Pollak asked people not fall into cheap populism and to remember what their grandparents died for in the war. “They fought against ideologies such as hatred, extremism. The extremists that have got into parliament are by their values on the side of those against whom our forebears fought in the Slovak National Uprising [during WWII],” stated Pollak.

At the end of his statement Pollak called on political parties not to stoop to the level of acquiring voters via radical opinions and to the level of the rhetoric of far-right extremists. Parties shouldn’t misuse the topic of the Roma to excuse their incompetence in addressing issues in the least-developed regions.