Based on an amendment to the Act on Ownership Rights that was signed by President Ivan Gašparovič on Wednesday, March 24, the Slovak Land Fund (SPF) board will be able to function without having any members proposed by the opposition, which has refused to nominate two candidates over a dispute about the fund's activities, the TASR newswire wrote on March 24.
As a result, the highest SPF body will from now on be able to carry out its activities with only the six members nominated by the cabinet and a three of the five candidates elected by parliament. Before this amendment, it was only able to function with all 11 board-member posts occupied. The opposition parties said earlier that they were not willing to nominate candidates to become SPF board members until the end of the current electoral term. "We've agreed on this because those who were nominated [last time] were misused for political purposes and for hushing up [land-transfer scandals] at the fund," said ethnic-Hungarian SMK party caucus leader Gyula Bárdos.
The board, whose role is to supervise the SPF's activities, was supposed to have 11 members in total, six nominated by the Government, and the other five – three coalition nominees and two opposition nominees – by the parliamentary committee for agriculture. Parliament is supposed to approve all nominations before the board members are appointed.
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.
