List of author's articles, page 35
Fico seeks '0.0%' gas price hike
“THERE will be a 0.0 percent hike,” was how Prime Minister Robert Fico responded to the price hike plans of Slovakia’s major gas distributor, giving Slovenský Plynárenský Priemysel (SPP) an ultimatum: minority shareholders of SPP should either refrain from pursuing higher gas prices for households or his cabinet would not approve the sale of their 49-percent stake in the utility as the state, which owns 51 percent of the company, has a pre-emptive right to buy the shares.
Roma issue generates more heat
ANTI-RACISM activists rallied Europe-wide, from Denmark to Bulgaria, on October 7 under the “Roma Pride” banner to draw attention to hostility and discrimination against Roma people. Roma communities in Slovakia were also in the spotlight recently, but the main reason was not Roma Pride’s celebration of their culture but instead two anti-Roma marches which took place in late September. They suggested that tensions between the country’s Roma and non-Roma populations, at least in some places, need urgent attention.
A race to the bottom
WHILE most politicians are destined to slip into political oblivion, there are always some who manage to sear their names into the long-term memory of the public by getting involved in the kind of dark or comic episodes that their more able or more honourable colleagues avoid. When foreign media outlets attempt to characterise Vladimír Mečiar, they invariably mention that he was the three-time Slovak prime minister who drove his country to the verge of international isolation in the 1990s, and during whose term the son of his arch-foe President Michal Kováč was abducted with – allegedly – the involvement of the state intelligence service.
Teachers consider strike
A 5-PERCENT pay hike will not eliminate the threat of another nationwide teachers’ strike as trade unions of employees of the education sector say they will not settle for less than a 10-percent increase to teachers’ salaries. Finance Minister Peter Kažimír offered a 5-percent increase on October 9, arguing that the state cannot squeeze more than €65 million from its coffers due to the government’s commitment to tame the public finance deficit. Educational institutions at all levels, from kindergartens to universities, have already been forced to close once this year, on September 13, by teachers’ striking for a 10-percent pay increase.
The exquisite cuisine of Japan
UPON hearing the word sushi, most Slovaks normally picture sashimi (actually small cuts of raw fish) or nigiri (raw fish or other ingredients served on or surrounded by small, individual portions of rice). However, sushi has many forms and varieties in terms of ingredients, colour, taste, texture and arrangement, Akira Takamatsu, Japan’s ambassador to Slovakia, explains as his chef Naoki Eguchi begins preparing chirashi sushi, which he says can be easily made by Slovaks in their own homes.
Tax shortfall creates fiscal headache
THE STATE will have to fill a gap of €233 million caused by weaker-than-predicted tax revenues if it wants to push the public finance deficit under 3 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2013, as required by Slovakia’s EU obligations. The Finance Ministry’s Financial Policy Institute (IFP) has scaled down its previous estimates for tax and payroll tax revenues for 2012 and 2013 by approximately 0.2 percent and 0.3 percent of the GDP, respectively, “without considering the positive impacts of the consolidation package on part of the revenues”.
Who really needs to 'adapt'?
LATELY Slovakia has been teeming with self-declared ‘experts’ on marginalised Roma communities with an uncontrollable desire to share their opinions with the public regardless of the fact that their ideas, ranging from proposals to move Roma to abandoned military barracks to calls for cleaning up land where Roma dwellings are built, only deepen the schism that divides Roma and non-Roma. Indeed, if at least every second Slovak with a passion for fast-cooked and radical solutions for minorities would create a job for a single Roma, the country would indeed come much closer to a solution.
New proxy proposes 'Roma Reform'
PETER Pollák, the first Roma ever to sit in the Slovak parliament, has taken over the job of government proxy for Roma communities at a time when two recent anti-Roma rallies unmistakably indicate that the situation of Slovakia’s Roma community needs urgent attention.
Insurance scheme advances
THE IMAGE of the humble sheep as somewhat lacking in initiative has been reinforced during the recent debate over the future of public health insurance in Slovakia. “I am not a sheep; I can make a choice on my own,” reads an advertising slogan used by one of the private companies that provides public health insurance to oppose a plan, directed by Prime Minister Robert Fico but overseen by the Health Ministry, to drive them out of the market and create a single, state-owned public health insurance system by 2014.
Anti-Roma protests draw thousands
THE UNSOLVED problems of Slovakia’s Roma communities are a ticking time-bomb, the explosion of which will affect the whole of society: this view has been expounded in various forms and contexts by people from very different background across the country. Two recent anti-Roma rallies indicate that the time-bomb is ticking louder than ever, and human rights watchdogs are warning that tensions between the Roma and non-Roma population in some places need urgent attention. However, they also warn that these frustrations can easily be abused by politicians who use the Roma issue merely to score political points.
Danish cuisine: Hearty, but increasingly healthy
WHILE Danes have taken to eating greener and healthier food over the past decades, meat – and especially pork – dishes originating in the countryside remain one of the mainstays of Danish cuisine.
Judges fired from council
JUDGES Ľudmila Babjaková, Jozef Vozár and Alexander Brostl were only allowed to serve just over a year and a half of their five-year terms in Slovakia’s top judicial body, the Judicial Council. The government of Robert Fico has recalled the trio, whom the local media described as critics of the president of Slovakia’s Supreme Court, Štefan Harabin, long before their term was completed, based on a proposal by Justice Minister Tomáš Borec, a non-partisan nominee to the Smer-dominated cabinet.
Slovak man accused of poison deaths
A 42-YEAR old Slovak man has been accused of knowingly mixing the deadly methanol cocktail that has killed 26 Czechs and resulted in a ban on the sale of Czech spirits with alcohol content of over 20 percent in Slovakia. The Czech police reported on September 24 that investigators had tracked down the source of the methanol.
Learning to stand
A BUNCH of adolescent boys were sitting on Bratislava trolleybus number 202, chuckling as they checked out a female celebrity the age of their mothers on their smartphone, while several elderly people were forced to stand for want of seats. After a younger woman offered her seat to one of the old ladies she turned to the physically fit boys, asking them to do the same. At that point their schoolteacher stepped in and told her confused co-travellers that she had ordered the boys to remain seated because the kids, whom she was escorting, were easily distracted and she could hardly fit 11 boys into an ambulance if something were to happen to one of them. Her response instantly generated an impromptu debate over what some participants called the decay of education and elementary schools’ loss of power to guide and educate.
MPs pass Čaplovič's schools changes
EDUCATION Minister Dušan Čaplovič has begun administering his remedy for the ills of the country’s schools system. He diagnosed these, shortly after being appointed in early April, as: a lack of qualified labour to work in some industrial sectors; an overly complicated system of school financing; and too many young people studying humanities subjects. The minister’s cure, in the form of a new law approved by MPs on September 20, includes, among other things, stricter conditions for the admission of students to secondary grammar schools – known to Slovaks as gymnasiums; these tend to be the most academic schools and are viewed as natural feeders into the university system – as well as new powers for Slovakia’s eight regional governments (VÚCs) to decide on the number of first-grade classes that can be opened at such schools.
Ministers criticise Kaliňák draft
BRIBES to grease the right wheels when granting state orders or subsidies to businesses stand at 13 percent of the worth of a given order on average: so assume businesspeople active in Slovakia, according to a recent survey carried out by the Business Alliance of Slovakia (PAS). The survey is being released at a time when a draft revision to the law on public procurement that Interior Minister Robert Kaliňák pitched for interdepartmental review is fuelling debate and harvesting criticism from political ethics watchdogs as well as some members of the government of Robert Fico, including Economy Minister Tomáš Malatinský.
Closing the door on graft
BRIBING a state official in some cases is as ‘simple’ as inserting a wad of hundred-euro banknotes into an envelope and dropping it off at the right office at the right time. Sometimes, giving kickbacks resembles a complicated intelligence operation, one which involves a whole apparatus of people who know where and when to transfer what, and how. Yet the role of any government which aims for some degree of transparency is to throw as many obstacles as possible in the way of such corrupt apparatuses, to reduce people’s motivation to give or accept bribes, and to repair holes in the law that allow room for graft.
Minister signals TV changes
THE ‘BARBARISATION’ of the nation: this is how Culture Minister Marek Maďarič characterised the effect that he believes the third season of a TV reality show – in which women bid for the hearts of single Slovak farmers – is having on Slovakia.
'Strategic' procurement stirs debate
EFFECTIVE and transparent procurement processes in which all bidders get equal treatment and the state gets the best deal for the best price: this is the world that Slovakia’s Interior Ministry envisions in its draft revision to the law on public procurement.
Barbarisation of the nation
“IGNORANCE of culture is colossal; society is commercial, consumption-oriented and kitschy, and it seems this trend cannot be stopped,” Rudolf Chmel, literary historian and former Slovak ambassador to Hungary, sighed back in 2004 when he served as culture minister in the second government of Mikuláš Dzurinda. During his term, Chmel proposed that by 2010 the state triple its spending on culture, which then stood at 0.6 percent of GDP, since cultural activities in Slovakia were “in a state of emergency, if not at an historical low”.
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