The Slovak Democratic and Christian Union's (SDKÚ) youth organisation called New Generation on February 13 asked the Interior Ministry and the Central Electoral Commission (ÚVK) to look into recently-published information about alleged forgery involving the registration of the 99 Percent-People's Voice party, the TASR newswire reported.
Zuzana Huttová, a young woman who collected signatures to register the party, recently revealed that she had forged some of the signatures on the registration application form. She reportedly said that having been promised one euro for each entry she copied some of the names and addresses from a telephone directory and then fabricated ID-card numbers for those names.
SDKÚ’s New Generation wing has called on appropriate bodies to look into the allegations. "Such serious accusations shouldn't be hanging in the air before the parliamentary elections," said Peter Markovič from New Generation, as quoted by TASR.
According to information reported in the media, Huttová may have been encouraged by 99% party members to forge the signatures even by adding 'dead souls'.
"They told me that I could collect 1,000 signatures in one evening without meeting anybody. One of them told me that they wouldn't mind if I copied [names from] gravestones," Huttová stated, as quoted by TASR, which wrote that Huttová has had her declaration about the forged signatures officially notarised.
At least 10,000 signatures are needed for a political party to be registered in Slovakia. The 99 Percent party submitted 15,000 signatures and was registered on December 9, 2011. Along with its statement, New Generation submitted a list of names of people that it claims did not sign the petition.
The 99 Percent party denied the accusations, stating that it has been correctly registered by the ministry.
"We know that the gorillas [a reference to the so-called Gorilla scandal] that have plundered this country are desperate and are longing for power. They're nervous about support for 99 Percent growing among the public," said party representatives Alena Dušatková and Pavol Pavlík, adding that Markovič has not done anything to improve SDKÚ's reputation and that he should pay attention to SDKÚ's scandals instead of focusing on other political parties.
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.
