Smer Calls for Special House Session over Potential Influencing of Election

Bratislava, June 8 (TASR) - The opposition Smer-SD party has filed a motion to convene a special parliamentary session over "potential unlawful influencing" of the upcoming snap election, TASR learnt from the party on Thursday. According to Smer, the election might be influenced in light of a visit by a group of Slovak state officials and representatives of NGOs to Brussels in April. Smer chief Robert Fico has claimed that these people informed EU and NATO representatives that the Slovak political opposition poses a hybrid threat and that if it wins the general election, Slovakia might leave NATO, so they asked the EU and NATO for an intervention. Fico has also taken a critical approach towards NATO's planned information campaign, which is aimed at improving public awareness of the benefits of NATO membership for Slovakia's security, reassuring the public of NATO's ability to bolster security and to raise awareness of the importance of maintaining support for Ukraine for Slovakia's security. The Smer leader noted that the campaign will take place over the summer and claimed that it's intended for people in the same age and education category as the one into which Smer-SD supporters fall most often. In his opinion, this is interference in the election campaign in Slovakia. In the motion, Smer asks NATO to stay out of the competition between Slovak political parties before the election, to cancel its information campaign before the election and to hold any information campaign in support of Slovakia's membership of NATO only afterwards, directly under the banner of NATO. The party also asked the US embassy in Slovakia to "refrain from any interference in the course of the election campaign on the territory of the Slovak Republic and to put an immediate end to a billboard campaign that grossly interferes in the internal affairs of the Slovak Republic". zel/df