SaS: Sulik's Slate Draft Contains No Galko or Rajtar

Bratislava, September 26 (TASR) – The coterie of people centred around Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) vice-chair Lubomir Galko and MP Jozef Rajtar won’t be included on the SaS 2020 general election slate draft, party chair Richard Sulik announced at a press conference on Thursday.

Sulik plans to unveil the definitive form of the slate on Monday (September 30).

The chairman added that people who don’t inspire confidence of being stable and reliable partners for the formation of a centre-right government have no business being on the slate. “They pose an extreme flight risk in terms of leaving SaS party and its caucus after the election,” claimed Sulik.

Sulik stated that he doesn’t want to have people on the party slate who impugned September’s extraordinary congress, where the SaS leader had his position reaffirmed. Aside from Galko and Rajtar, SaS vice-chair Jana Kissova and caucus chair Natalia Blahova also rejected the congress results and founded a platform within the party called the ‘Democratic Core’.

Sulik regrets the fact that Kissova turned down his slate draft, even though he had offered her third place. The election slate is to be led by him, with MEP Lucia Duris Nicholsonova in the second spot.

In their response, caucus chair Natalia Blahova and Rajtar both voiced their surprise at being invited to leave the party by Sulik.

“Personally, we’re quite sad at witnessing this. We’ve never imagined that the work we did for SaS would end one day with the chairman urging distinguished party members to leave. We don’t deserve this. These are people who were behind the programme he [Sulik] now claims for his own,” said Blahova. She pointed out that if people affiliated with the platform leave, the party would lose its entire programme. “We didn’t expect this even in our wildest nightmares,” she claimed.

“We were surprised to learn that Richard Sulik called our platform unacceptable and even urged us to leave,” stated Rajtar. He added that by convening the extraordinary party congress in September, Sulik didn’t grant potential challengers an adequate time to prepare their candidacies for the top party post.

According to Blahova, Sulik’s actions militate against the effort to forge a good, stable government out of the current opposition parties. “The irresponsible behaviour of our chairman will, in all likelihood, have an adverse effect on the formation of a future governing coalition,” said Blahova.

A total of 26 party members are signatories to the Democratic Core declaration, all of whom have been encouraged to leave the party. Aside from Kissova, Galko, Blahova and Rajtar, the declaration was inked also by MPs Vladimir Sloboda, Radoslav Pavelka and Renata Kascakova.

Party members will be voting on the slate at an extraordinary nomination congress, scheduled for October 5.