MARTIN Poliačik, Freedom and Solidarity: “Jesus [Ježiš] Christ would vote for registered partnerships.”
Igor Matovič, Ordinary People and Independent Personalities: “Don’t you take Jesus into your filthy liberal mouth.”
Béla Bugár, Most-Híd: “Do you know what the Lord would do? Take the whip.”
Július Brocka, Christian Democrat Movement: “Only a crazy man would argue the way you just did.”
Excerpts from the parliamentary debate about giving homosexual couples a legal framework to exist make for fun reading. In several ways, they illustrate the current state of the political discourse in Slovakia.
You have the right-wing parties coming up with all sorts of ideas – solutions to the Roma problem, suggestions on what to do with the economy or for how to expand personal freedoms. That is all fine. But two questions come to mind – why didn’t they take the chance to make all this happen when they had the opportunity, instead of ending their coalition in complete chaos after just a year and a half? And what’s the point of proposing things for which you have no support anyway?
Another characteristic trait of the current political discussions is that whatever the topic, it always ends in a row between the opposition parties. There probably are some things that at least most of them could agree on. But usually it’s impossible to find consensus even within a single party.
And then there is Smer, who can mostly keep quiet, as they did in the debate about what Jesus would do, were he in parliament. Much of what they are doing is clearly hurting the country – no progress is being made within the judiciary, the nationalisation of health-care insurers is on the way and little is being done to cut wasteful public spending. But the ruling party has little to worry about. For the time being, the chance that someone can unite the opposition ranks and pose a serious threat to Smer seems slimmer than that of Poliačik or Matovič learning to walk on water.
