It is unlikely that the governing coalition would continue with the same composition if she resigned said Prime Minister Iveta Radičová on TV Markíza's political discussion programme 'Na Telo' on Sunday, December 5, the TASR newswire reported.
"It can't remain with the same composition. If the coalition can't come to an agreement on basic things which it has promised to the people ... it can't continue like this," she said, as quoted by the TASR newswire. According to Radičová, a new coalition would more likely consist of now-opposition Smer and some current parties of the coalition. At the same time she ruled out that the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ) could be in the fold of this theoretical coalition.
Radičová described the decision of at least four coalition MPs to not support joint coalition candidate for Prosecutor General, Jozef Čentéš, as incomprehensible.
"First they voted for the Government Manifesto, which includes such a change (...). In addition, they – twice in a row – didn't give their vote to Mr. [Dobroslav] Trnka... and, after two weeks, they declared a change of heart," said the prime minister.
The SDKÚ vice-chair also stated that the coalition MPs who voted against Čentéš could have come from her party. Radičová is not sure whether she will remain in the post after the upcoming repeat vote scheduled on December 7. She said she does not want to go back on her promise that she would step down if coalition's joint candidate Čentéš – who, unlike the previous two candidates who have fallen by the wayside in this vote, was put forward as a joint candidate of the coalition – is not elected.
She added that she does not support Trnka as people are not satisfied with some of the big prosecutorial issues that remain unresolved. Radičová would not say in the Sunday discussion whether the vote of the Prosecutor General would be changed from a secret ballot to a recorded one.
"The truth is that the secret vote in the form in which we have it now will not necessarily lead to selecting the new Prosecutor General. But this doesn't mean that the only choice that we have is to think about the [manner of the] vote itself. I strictly disapprove of changing the rules of the game during the game itself," she stressed, adding that the manner of voting has to be in line with the Constitution.
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.
