AT A SESSION held on July 4, the new Slovak parliament elected Pavol Paška from the ruling Smer party as its new speaker, with 98 out of 148 MPs present supporting the nomination.
Parliament also elected three deputy speakers - Miroslav Číž from Smer, Anna Belousovová from the SNS party and Viliam Veteška from the HZDS. The fourth deputy speaker post belongs to the opposition, which nominated Milan Hort of the SDKÚ party to the post, the Pravda daily wrote.
Paška said he wanted consensus, cooperation, and respect to dominate in the new parliament. He also wants to make parliamentary sessions public through live broadcasts on the public service Slovak Television (STV) channel, to "prevent information about parliamentary sessions being manipulated", the SITA news agency wrote.
Apart from the top parliamentary posts, MPs also approved the new heads of parliamentary committees. Of the total 19 committees, 12 will be led by coalition MPs and 7 by the opposition.
