Slovak citizens who voluntarily acquire citizenship in another country will continue to lose their Slovak citizenship, after lawmakers on Thursday, March 24, rejected a bill proposed by the opposition Smer party to amend the current law, which was itself passed by the previous, Smer-led, government.
The State Citizenship Act was passed last year before the June general election as a countermeasure to a legislative initiative from Budapest that allows Hungarians outside Hungary to more easily claim Hungarian citizenship.
Smer now proposes a softer version, hoping to stop the governing coalition in its attempt to scrap the strictest stipulations and hence change the law more profoundly. Only 68 MPs out of 146 present voted in favour of the Smer bill. Among those voting with Smer were independent MP Igor Matovič and coalition KDH MP Radoslav Procházka. Matovič later claimed that he did not, in fact, want to support the Smer amendment, but that his subconscious made him do it.
"My subconscious moved my finger to a different button. My brain told me to press nay, while my subconscious told me to press yea. And my subconscious won over my brain. Perhaps it's just my split integrity," Matovič told journalists after the vote.
Matovič is already outside the coalition after having been expelled from the SaS caucus over a similar rebellion, but Béla Bugár, the leader of Most-Híd, another coalition party, signalled that KDH MP Radoslav Procházka's second vote with the opposition was more significant.
"That's what I see as a problem. And for KDH it will be a problem if some of our MPs vote for opposition proposals in future, say on health-care issues. Unfortunately, that's how it's going to be from now on," Bugár concluded.
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.
