Marian Kotleba (source: TASR)
When President Andrej Kiska visited a grammar school in Brezno (Banská Bystrica Region) in April, its teachers openly criticised fascism and supporters of the far-right People’s Party – Our Slovakia (ĽSNS).
It now seems that the school can forget about the approved subsidy of €65,000 it planned to use for replacing windows, the Denník N daily reported.
The Ján Chalupka Grammar School is administered by the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region, led by ĽSNS chair Marian Kotleba. Though it cannot be proven that the decision to stop the money is linked with the criticism of fascism, Denník N recalls the course of the events preceding it.
First, the school’s teachers publicly slammed fascism, while ĽSNS supporters wearing notorious green T-shirts were standing nearby. Subsequently, the teachers were criticised by Richard Tokušev, an ĽSNS member who at the same time works for the regional authority as the officer responsible for investments. Tokušev later visited the school to find out how it looked with the replacement of the windows.
After some time, the school received a notification that the subsidy was stopped, without further explanation, Denník N wrote.
Meanwhile, the situation at the school is bad. Its management has asked for the money to replace the windows, and the regional government approved a subsidy of €115,000. The school already used part of it last year and planned to use the rest this year.
The school had announced its intention to the region already in April, in order to be able to complete the public procurement and prepare the construction work before the beginning of the new school year in September, said regional deputy Slavomír Pôbiš of Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), who first reported on stopping the money.
The school’s headmaster Miroslav Glembek, and his deputy Jana Šteňová, say that they do not know about the reason behind such a decision. They are currently waiting for the official explanation, as reported by Denník N.
