BRATISLAVA, September 9, (WEBNOVINY) — The second reading of the draft constitutional amendment to partially curtail immunity of parliamentary deputies and judges from criminal prosecution was interrupted Thursday. During the debate, deputy for the ruling coalition SaS Igor Matovic called Robert Kalinak of opposition SMER-SD a name after the latter one made an uncalled-for remark addressing Mr. Matovic, who then asked Mr. Kalinak to follow him outside the conference hall. The session had to be interrupted as several deputies left their seats.
Speaker of Parliament Richard Sulik, leader of SaS, tried to calm the situation down by assuring the assembly that the deputies were only discussing their differences of opinion and did not actually fight. He called on the parliamentary deputies to continue in the debate; however his predecessor on the post of the Speaker of Parliament Pavol Paska during the previous election term requested convening a meeting of chairpersons of parliamentary clubs.
Shortly before the interruption of the debate on the constitutional amendment, ex-prime minister and leader of the strongest opposition party SMER-SD Robert Fico repeated again his request to postpone voting on curbing the immunity of deputies and judges and to hold the vote after September 18, when a referendum on this issue is held. In his opinion, then they can negotiate through expert teams how to adjust the immunity so that it was functional and European. According to Mr. Fico, during his negotiations with Prime Minister Iveta Radicova, they did discuss content only procedure, not content of the bill. As he said, SMER-SD will never agree with curbing immunity of judges and called it a principal demand of the party.
SITA