Smer-SD Won't Initiate No-confidence Vote in Kollar
Bratislava, July 2 (TASR) – The opposition Smer-SD will probably not initiate a no-confidence vote in Parliamentary Chair Boris Kollar (We Are Family) due to his master’s thesis, Smer-SD Chair Robert Fico told a press conference on Thursday, adding that more important for the party is what the governing coalition is doing in this regard.
Fico criticised the proposal of the coalition OLaNO party to retroactively check all final papers. “It’s impossible, it’s rude, it’s unconstitutional, it’s retroactive and it must be rejected. Let them solve the problem with Boris Kollar themselves,” said Fico.
The Smer-SD chairman is more concerned by what Prime Minister Igor Matovic (OLaNO) is doing than by the case itself. “If we are to talk about anything at all in Parliament, then we’d welcome a point on the agenda where we’d start talking about the madness that the Government is proposing,” he said, pointing out that the Smer-SD party hadn’t voted in the past against then head of Parliament and the Slovak National Party (SNS) Andrej Danko, who, like Kollar, faced suspicions of plagiarism. “It would be very incorrect if we behaved completely differently now,” he noted.
Kollar’s ousting won’t be initiated by the opposition far-right LSNS either. According to party spokesman Ondrej Durica, they’ll discuss the issue at their caucus but they’re waiting for the development in the coalition and the steps of the parliamentary chair himself. “We consider it to be a problem of the coalition and also a problem and responsibility of the prime minister,” he said.
Kollar is facing suspicions of plagiarising his diploma thesis. The For the People as well as Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) parties have called on him to resign, although OLaNO hasn’t done so. It suggested that Education Minister Branislav Groehling (SaS) and Justice Minister Maria Kolikova (For the People) should prepare a law that would enable diploma theses to be examined retroactively. Kollar maintains that he gained his master degree in a lawful manner and doesn’t intend to use it in politics any longer.