Igor Matovič, a newly elected member of the Slovak parliament from the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party told the internet news-server aktualne.sk on Thursday, June 24, that he was offered “a huge amount of money” to destabilise the emerging four-party coalition so that an early parliamentary election would be triggered, the TASR newswire wrote.
To pass the new government’s programme statement at least 76 votes in parliament are needed. Matovič was allegedly asked to vote against the document along with three other MPs from the 'Ordinary People' grouping within SaS and without those four votes the coalition would only have 75 votes out of 150.
Matovič said that he received the offer on Wednesday, June 23. “I was told that this is an offer coming from business circles. Assuming the amount someone is willing to pay us, they must want to get back to power really bad,” he said for the TASR newswire, alluding that the offer may have come from persons affiliated with Smer.
He refused to specify the exact sum, saying that it was somewhere between €3.3 and €33.3 million. The money was offered to the four MPs who had managed to get into parliament from the very bottom of the SaS slate because of preferential ballots cast for them.
Matovič, a 37-year-old businessman, said that he was immune to the temptation and SaS party chairman Richard Sulík said that Matovič did the right thing when he published the offer. Sulík confirmed that Matovič told him about the offer, also disclosing who made it, and said that they would not accept it.
Sulík claims that the offer “went through more people”, with the original source being unknown. However, Sulik refused to speculate on this any further. Matovič said he will not bring any criminal charges, as he has no written proof, Sulík said.
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.
