List of author's articles, page 2
Máj
IT DOESN’T take Freud to see the springtime tradition of putting up large wooden poles as a sign of manly power. And Robert Fico’s decision to make the erection of a máj one of his first public appearances after a humiliating loss in the presidential elections also seems somewhat symbolic.
Eurovoľby
THE EURO elections (eurovoľby) roughly coincide with the time when Iveta Radičová’s term as prime minister was supposed to expire. Were it not for the 2011 no-confidence vote, the country would still be run by a centre-right government, Robert Fico would be the leader of the opposition (or the president-elect), General Prosecutor Jaromír Čižnár just a regular prosecutor, and controversial Supreme Court boss Štefan Harabin would probably not be considering re-election.
Šibať
IT’S time to suffer. Not only because Easter with its traditional whipping (šibačka) has arrived, but also because the presidential elections are over. Before the vote, Smer had to play nice, but now they can again show their real and perceived enemies that they are in charge.
Dvere
“IT’S useless asking where the door (dvere) is shut,” former justice minister Lucia Žitňanská said when explaining why she didn’t even consider joining the new right-wing party announced by Radoslav Procházka and chose to join Most–Híd instead. But the quote could serve to illustrate the state of the political right in general.
Rada
HERE’S a little rada (advice) for the members of the Judicial ‘rada’ (council). Stop, before it’s too late. The presidential elections may have received the most attention, but the upcoming elections of the new head of the Supreme Court may be just as significant. The selection of Štefan Harabin five years ago proved just as disastrous as expected - the former justice minister with unexplained ties with a Kosovar drug lord manipulated proceedings and permanently intimidated his perceived enemies within the judiciary.
Andrej Kiska
INTERESTED in the results of the Slovak presidential elections? Here’s a little Q&A to help you understand what’s actually going on.
Scientológia
SLOVAKIA has huge unemployment and a broken judiciary, tens of thousands of its Roma live in medieval conditions and its biggest neighbour is close to war. And what’s the main topic of the presidential elections? Scientology.
Šúchať nohami
“I WILL just shuffle my feet (šúchať nohami) and wait for the results,” was the phrase Prime Minister Robert Fico kept repeating before the first round of the presidential elections. Well, it seems his heel injury has taken its toll, as the shuffling just wasn’t enough. The meagre 28 percent he received must be a bitter disappointment for the PM, who never went below 35 percent in recent polls and whose Smer party received 45 percent in the 2012 parliamentary elections.
Pozývací list
WHEN Vasil Biľak passed away on February 6, no one could have suspected that just a month later history would repeat itself and someone else would get the idea to address an invitation letter (pozývací list) to the Kremlin.
Achilova päta
INVULNERABLE demigods of the past could at least be stopped by heel injuries. Today, they undergo a quick surgery, get a crutch and return to the campaign trail within hours.
Mafia
“THIS is how the mafia works, they take care of their own.” Daniel Lipšic’s assessment of Tomáš Borec’s decision to help a former regional Smer politician convicted of corruption stay out of jail, at least for the time being, does contain some degree of political hyperbole. Borec is no Mafioso.
Nasťa
THERE are only two sports in which Slovakia has ever won an Olympic gold medal - canoeing and the biathlon. And both of the two victories from the winter games belong to Nasťa Kuzmina. This statistic illustrates several points.
Zlyhanie
“THE DISTRICT prosecution seriously failed.” No, this is not a quote by another journalist, human rights activist or opposition MP. This is how the general prosecutor assessed the failure (zlyhanie) of his subordinates from Nitra, where attacks by neo-Nazis remain unsolved and the perpetrators remain free, even four months after the first in a series of beatings was recorded in shocking detail by a city camera.
Kopanec
IF THERE is one video you really need to see to understand today’s Slovakia, it’s the one where skinheads from Nitra kick helpless people in the head and slap a waitress trying to help. Not that a kick (kopanec) in the head would be so commonplace. But it illustrates one of the greatest threats ahead of us – the one of rising extremism.
Majdan
WHEN you watch the protests in the Ukrainian capital’s Independence Square (majdan) from an office in Bratislava, several things come to mind. The first is how lucky Slovakia is. Robert Fico may have his flaws, the oligarchs have too much say, the judiciary is dysfunctional, teachers are underpaid, unemployment is high and something needs to be done about the Roma. But none of these problems match what you see in Kiev.
IKEA
IT SEEMS that horse meat in beef meatballs is not the only scandalous union IKEA is promoting. Now they also have a lesbian couple in their magazine. Of course, this is not something local pro-family groups take lightly, especially given the fact that the Swedish furniture-maker refuses to apologise for publishing the story of Clara and Kirsty, and does not plan to withdraw the publication, as they did with Köttbullar when its identity crisis emerged.
Primerane
LAST week saw hockey legend Miroslav Šatan left out of the nomination for the Olympics, a technical error prevented TV Markíza from broadcasting its prime-time news programme for the first time in history, and Prime Minister Robert Fico revealed that as a child he didn’t watch television.
Pripravený
THE WAITING is finally over and we now know that Robert Fico is Pripravený pre Slovensko (Prepared for Slovakia). But the Prime Minister’s election slogan for the upcoming presidential campaign still leaves two question open – why does he want to run in the first place? And what should we be getting ready for?
Mečiar
THIS week may mark the end of an era. Vladimír Mečiar has been an irrelevant figure since 2010, when his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) failed to make it into parliament. But now he’s gone from the HZDS altogether, leaving behind the meagre remains of the party he founded, ruled and turned into a dominant political force in the 1990s.
Kultúra smrti
“IF MAN stands up to God’s order, he introduces a culture of death (kultúra smrti)... The adherents of the culture of death come with a new ‘gender ideology’. In its name, they wish to introduce a so-called ‘gender equality’... They want to convince us that none of us exists by nature as man and woman, and they want to make the God-blessed union of man and woman equal with the union of two men or two women. That creates a sodomite blotch, which contradicts God’s will and brings about God’s wrath… The activists of ‘gender equality’ do not give up, but await an opportunity to control education through legislation and enforce this ‘sodomite ideology’ upon schools and pre-schools. Such education would not only strip the child of its decency, but would also perfectly cripple it morally and psychologically.”
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