BRATISLAVA, January 30, (WEBNOVINY) — Another protest roused by the Gorilla graft scandal is to take place in Bratislava on February 3 with organizers expecting up to ten thousand participants. “It definitely will be on February 3, we expect more participants, so I gave [the authorities] a notice of 10,000 participants,” said Lucia Gallova, one of the protest’s organizers. According to the demonstration’s Facebook site, over 8,000 individuals are planning to participate as of this Monday. Over 15,000 individuals ‘might attend’. The protest should start on Friday on the SNP Square at 1600 CET, further program is yet to be announced. “We’ve showed in Bratislava that we can unite for an idea of equality, justice, and ethics. Our actions must be considered so that our efforts are not wasted. Unity means power, but this power needs to be channeled in the right direction,” write the organizers at website www.protestgorila.sk.
Smaller protests are also planned to take place in Kosice, Zilina, Trencin, Zvolen and Presov with some 9,000 attending according to Facebook events.
The first protest took place in Bratislava last Friday, data on the number of participants vary. The crowd marched from the SNP Square to the presidential palace and moved to the parliament from there. Both buildings were targeted by numerous banana-throwers. Most demands of the protesters target directly the Gorilla case and responsible politicians, but they’d also like to postpone the early parliamentary elections scheduled for March until September 2012.
This Monday, the Office of the Parliament announced their plan to sue the organizers for damages worth between 3,000 and 5,000 euros which the building should have suffered during the protest. KDH MP Radoslav Prochazka commented the issue, saying that he understands the efforts of the Office of the Parliament to manage the institution’s property well, yet considers filing a lawsuit in such case totally inappropriate. Prochazka said he is sorry for actions of the parliament and asks the protest’s organizers to refrain from any violence. Gallova said that the organizers bear no responsibility for any damages and for individuals who were throwing eggs and bananas as they kept on calling all participants to remain peaceful during the protest.
Representatives of Bratislava’s Old Town are also displeased with last Friday’s protest, claiming that the crowd did not follow the route organizers announced and that the law prohibiting protests to take place closer than fifty meters from the parliament was violated.
Leaked intelligence service file code-named Gorilla documents alleged influence on Slovak politics by the Penta financial group. The material released on the Internet before Christmas describes appointments of political nominees in state-run companies, kickbacks for privatization and the web of relations between politicians, tycoons and security services in the period 2005-2006. Interior Minister Daniel Lipsic created a specialized team that investigates the case. On January 9, the investigator started criminal prosecution for the crime of establishing, preparing and supporting a criminal gang while the persons are mainly suspected of crimes of corruption and abuse of powers of a public official. The criminal prosecution is supervised by the Special Prosecution Office.
SITA