Alliance for Family claims Kiska broke promise by sending petition to Constitutional Court

President Andrej Kiska by asking the Constitutional Court to look into the proposal of a referendum on protecting the traditional family has broken his promise given before he was elected, the Alliance for Family (AZR) spokesman Andrej Chromík said September 3.

President Andrej Kiska by asking the Constitutional Court to look into the proposal of a referendum on protecting the traditional family has broken his promise given before he was elected, the Alliance for Family (AZR) spokesman Andrej Chromík said September 3.

The Alliance for Family has succeeded to collect 400,000 signatures (while only 350,000 signatures are required to launch a referendum) asking to organise a referendum on the traditional family and the form of sexual education at schools.

AZR wants to see four questions in the referendum: whether marriage should be a term used exclusively for the union of a man and a woman; the right of same-sex couples to adopt children; whether or not other forms of partnership apart from marriage should have special protection; and whether schools should be allowed to require that children take part in sex education classes.

“When we met him before the presidential election [in March], he didn’t express any objections to the referendum, while the questions had already been known," AZR spokesman Anton Chromík said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. “Quite to the contrary, he promised that he’d link the referendum to one of the elections.”

“It’s a huge disappointment of the first civic president, who is now receiving complaining e-mails and phone calls from throughout Slovakia,” Eva Grey of the AZR said. Chromík said that he does not see anything in the questions that would infringe on someone’s rights. "Neither the registered partnerships [of same-sex couples], nor adoptions of children by homosexual couples are fundamental rights, and we’d be unhappy to see the Constitutional Court indicating otherwise.”

A number of legal experts have asserted, however, that some of the questions included in the proposed referendum concern principal rights and freedoms, which shouldn’t be subject to referendums. Ombudswoman Jana Dubovcová has also voiced her concern over the wording of the questions, TASR wrote.

(Source: TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.

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