BRATISLAVA, February 6, (WEBNOVINY) – The ruling coalition partners KDH and MOST-HID have agreed that the KDH will support the draft amendment to the citizenship act from the workroom of SDKU-DS, SaS and MOST-HID. Deputy leader of the KDH party Pavol Abrhan told SITA news agency that in return, MOST-HID led by Bela Bugar will support the proposal of the KDH that people with dual citizenship will not be able to serve on some positions. The KDH will have to omit prosecutors from their proposal of posts to which the ban will apply. In the state administration, people with dual citizenship will not be able to work on posts which handle classified information.
The KDH and MOST-HID parties were asked to hold bilateral talks on the draft revision to the citizenship act at the meeting of coalition leaders. KDH did not support the draft submitted by the SDKU-DS, SaS and MOST-HID and suggested that individuals with dual citizenship would not be able to serve police officers, SIS members, soldiers, prosecutors, customs officers, members of the Correctional and Judicial Guards Service, in the Railway Police and in the National Security Office. MOST-HID disagreed with the KDH proposal.
In spite of the recently achieved accord between KDH and MOST-HID, the Coalition Council will still discuss the draft bills on state citizenship. The reason behind it is that the SaS cannot secure the support of its four-member Ordinary People faction for the coalition draft. Leader of the faction Igor Matovic announced Ordinary People would vote for an amendment to the state citizenship law submitted to parliament by opposition SMER-SD deputies. Matovic explained that he wants to motivate the coalition in this way to discuss with him how to fix the current citizenship law. The amendment from the SMER-SD workroom enables Slovak citizens to gain citizenship of a country where they have residence registered for six months at least.
On Monday, the coalition leaders will also discuss the proposal of Speaker of Parliament Richard Sulik to replace Deputy Speaker of Parliament Robert Fico. “ If it were up to me, I would sack Fico. I was pleasantly surprised that OKS deputies seized the idea and are suggesting to go ahead with it. It is worth going for it when a coalition majority is secured. I will submit this proposal to the Coalition Council, because that person was knowingly causing huge damages to Slovakia by knowingly letting parliament pass two unconstitutional bills, on which the Constitutional Court ruled,” Sulik said last week. Deputies for the OKS party and members of the MOST-HID caucus support Sulik’s proposal, unlike KDH deputies. Abrhan explained that if Fico is to be sacked for what he did as prime minister, it has nothing to do with the post of deputy speaker of parliament. Prime Minister Iveta Radicova disagrees with Sulik’s idea, too, saying that the reasons for Fico’s dismissal come from his past political activities when he was prime minister.
Leader of the MOST-HID party Bela Bugar does not support the proposal of Richard Sulik to sack Fico from the post of deputy speaker of parliament, either. “I don’t think we should be creating here another tortured or persecuted person,” he explained his position. Bugar considers the proposal to be very badly timed, as well as highly sensitive, which should first of all be debated within the coalition, and only then announced to the media.
SITA