BRATISLAVA, February 7, (WEBNOVINY) – The election list of Igor Matovic’s Ordinary People and Independent Personalities will become shorter. Ten candidates for the Conservative Democrats of Slovakia (KDS), ten candidates for the OKS party, together with prominent scientist and journalist Martin Mojzis, actor Stefan Bucko, former journalist Eugen Korda and the slate’s number nineteen Dagmar Babcanova have definitely decided to withdraw their candidacy. The reason is that Matovic, Ordinary People’s initiator and official chairman, insists that OKS Chairman Peter Zajac and his KDS counterpart Vladimir Palko undergo a polygraph test to answer the question of whether they have ever accepted a bribe.
“Igor Matovic is slaughtering his own child and a child of us all,” said Zajac at Tuesday’s press conference. He underlined that he does not see the lie detector test as a personal problem, but a political one. “What they call a lie detector test much reminds of screenings in the Communist era, followed by cleansing,” explained Zajac.
“It is true, KDS is also leaving the slate. It is impossible to be on one slate with Igor Matovic, not a minute longer. (…) He’s lying. We will not be on a slate with a liar even a minute longer,” said Palko, claiming that Matovic has been blackmailing Ordinary People candidates already for several days, threatening to remove them from the list and trying to dictate them how to act in public. “He promised independent personalities but what he in fact wants are trained monkeys,” claims Palko. He also added that Matovic is lying when he tells the media that his proposal to undergo a polygraph exam was only intended for the three party chairmen. There have allegedly been proposals voiced to test the entire slate or examine only members of political parties, while testing just the three chairmen has never been on the table.
Palko considers the attempt to run in the parliamentary elections with the Ordinary People as the last attempt to do idealistic politics, while they tried to save the joint slate. “We did everything in human powers, maybe even twice or three times as much, but we can not proceed differently at this moment.” He, however, does not plan to prevent Matovic from taking the polygraph test. “Let him take it; I’ll send him a kilo of bananas.” According to Mojzis, Ordinary People candidates are shocked and are trying to resolve the problem. “Yet it will probably not be possible after this press conference,” he added.
Mojzis considers the demand to take a polygraph exam to be an insult of the people he respects. Bucko decided to leave as he follows the decisions of people who talked him into getting into politics. “I’d be happy to stay, had I not given Matovic my word that I would leave when he made that insane and criminalizing move,” said Korda.
Neither Palko nor Zajac wanted to recommend their supporters whom to vote instead in the elections. The leaving candidates first announced they considered leaving the slate on Monday after Matovic demanded them to take a polygraph examination. Matovic later claimed he wanted only Palko, Zajac and himself to take the examination, yet some of his slate colleagues denied it. Still, Matovic says he would rather lose several percent of the vote than have people afraid of the lie detector on his list.
SITA