(source: Tibor Somogyi, SME)
Young corruption fighters have already decided to organize another march against corruption, Denník N informed. Their conditions have not been met and their two week deadline is up. The next march will be organized in Bratislava and Košice in about a month. This time high-schoolers are cooperating with university students. They are also planning to collect 100,000 signatures for a petition. More information will come on Tuesday, May 2.
The first rally organised by young Slovak students was also covered by The New York Times.
Young people in Slovakia are trying to take their country back for the next generation. Their battle is infused with a healthy dose of youthful idealism but their anticorruption campaign has caught on, as have like-minded movements across the region, wrote the NY Times.
“The pair of budding corruption fighters paused outside Slovakia’s presidential palace, trying to decide how long to give the government to capitulate to their demands. They wanted the resignations of the interior minister and the national police chief, as well as full and transparent investigations of a parade of recent corruption scandals,“ wrote reporter Rick Lyman about the 18-year-old organizers David Straka and Karolína Farská.
Corruption is a problem in many of the former communist countries of Eastern Europe, according to him.
„Things have grown so bad that some analysts now speak in terms of “state capture” — where all major state institutions are effectively in the hands of corrupt politicians and untouchable oligarchs,“ he wrote for the NY Times, adding that the problem is entering an even more critical stage, as authoritarian-minded leaders leverage the rise of nationalism and populism to consolidate power.
“The current government of Slovakia, led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, assumed power in 2012 largely on the heels of a huge government scandal. The so-called Gorilla scandal, named after the code name given to a secret dossier, involving government officials, oligarchs and others caught on tape discussing kickbacks and other corrupt activities,” Lyman explained in his NY Times article.
