BRATISLAVA, October 14, (WEBNOVINY) — Prime Minister Iveta Radicova (SDKU-DS) of center-right ruling coalition is convinced that her party’s colleagues Finance Minister Ivan Miklos and Justice Minister Lucia Zitnanska did not get to their apartments in Bratislava about fifteen years ago by abusing the system. In her opinion, their stories are similar to stories of thousands of people at that time. She spoke during regular Question Hour in parliament on Thursday. She was answering a question by Andrej Kolesik of the opposition SMER-SD, who asked her whether she was not concerned about the way Miklos and Zitnanska acquired their lucrative apartments in Bratislava Old Town.
As Radicova reminded the opposition, they became owners of the flats in which they lived in line with the law effective at that time. The law was adopted during Vladimir Meciar’s government in 1993. At that time, people could buy apartments they were renting and acquire their full ownership. Furthermore, municipal apartments were provided to those people willing to reconstruct the flat or provide another home in a different district of the town in exchange, which was how Miklos acquired his flat. That is why according to Radicova, he did not do anything bad. “The state did not lose any residential property in that way, on the contrary, for an old apartment it got a completely new one,” she said. At that time, 335,000 people bought apartments for sums that are symbolic from today’s perspective, she added. The Prime Minister considers absurd to even discuss the apartment of minister Zitnanska. As was the practice at that time, Zitnanska was on a waiting list of applicants for communal or state homes since 1992 when she lived in seven-member household. “At that time, she did not know she would ever be in politics and she entered it only ten years later,” Radicova underscored.
SITA