BRATISLAVA, February 21, (SITA) – A referendum on whether the Slovak language should be the only official language in Slovakia will not take place together with parliamentary elections on March 10 as the opposition SNS party wanted. SNS, which has been collecting signatures necessary for the referendum to be announced, will not manage to hand over the signatures to the Presidential Office in time.
“We admit that we have quite a high data error rate on the signature sheets. The head office is currently crossing out invalid boxes from the sheets so that we can be sure we’ll hand over 350,000 valid signatures,” head of SNS deputy caucus Rafael Rafaj told SITA on Tuesday.
Rafaj hopes that the presidential office will receive their signatures before the elections. Further actions are up to the president. However, the caucus chairman is well aware that the society will perceive other political and social issues as more important after the elections. The party admits that if a respective revision of the state language act is part of the program statement of a new government, there may not be a need to hold the referendum after all.
According to some lawyers, a referendum on whether the Slovak language should be the official language on the whole territory of Slovakia would be unconstitutional as the constitution does not allow referendums on fundamental human rights and freedoms. According to the Slovak constitution, using minority languages in official communication is among fundamental human rights and freedoms. President Gasparovic has not yet commented on the issue.
SITA