BRATISLAVA, December 21, (WEBNOVINY) — Slovak MPs held a minute’s silence on Wednesday before the opening of their last session this year to honor the first president of the Czech Republic and the last president of Czechoslovakia, dissident playwright Vaclav Havel. He died on December 18 after a long respiratory illness.
Speaker of Parliament Pavol Hrusovsky remembered that Havel was the first democratically elected post-November president of Slovaks and Czechs. “He was the key personality of the fight for freedom and democracy. He belonged among those personalties that became a symbol of the end of the Communist era in central Europe. Devotion to ideas of freedom, democracy and truth was extraordinary in Havel and now I can and want to say: this devotion must be followed, said Hrusovsky.
The parliament is to deal midweek only with two bills vetoed by President Ivan Gasparovic. The first point is the amendment to the law on remuneration of some constitutional officials, freezing salaries of MPs, government members and the president for next year. Gasparovic does not like the clause according to which MPs can claim pay since their election and not after they are sworn in as it is now. The constitutional and judicial committee dealt with the matter earlier on Wednesday but failed to adopt a resolution answering the president’s reservation. The outcome of the voting on the issue is unclear. The coalition and the opposition however agree that they will approve zero growth of their pay also in the repeated vote.
The second point of the agenda of the unscheduled parliamentary session is the amendment to the law on social services. MPs however agreed that they will not vote on it and return it on the agenda in January. According to the amendment to the law on social services, social services facilities established by municipalities or private social services will be provided public funds from the ministry’s budget through a dedicated subsidy in the same volume. The bill further requires that counties or municipalities demand clients to pay at least half of the costs for long-term care services in social service facilities. The change should result in increasing the revenues of local self-governments operating these facilities.
SITA