House Committee on SIS to Be Headed by Coalition Vice-chairs

Bratislava, September 24 (TASR) - The House Committee for the Supervision of Slovak Intelligence Service (SIS) will be headed by its vice-chairs, as newly-elected chair Samuel Migal (Voice-SD) tasked newly-elected vice-chair Peter Suca (Smer-SD) and vice-chair Peter Kotlar (SNS) to preside over its sessions. Migal will step down as the committee chair on Wednesday (September 25), in line with his public pledge. He reiterated that the post of the chair belongs to the opposition, particularly SaS party. The top committee post was held by Maria Kolikova (SaS) until June, when she was ousted by the coalition. SaS insists on nominating Kolikova again, whereas the coalition rejects her. "The opposition had an option to put up its own candidate for the vice-chair even today," Migal stated after the session. Whether or not the committee will have its chair is up to the opposition, which is free to propose its own candidate, but not Kolikova. "From our point of view, Maria Kolikova violated the law, violated the rules of procedure and grounds for her dismissal were clear, despite the fact that she's been saying something else," he claimed. Kolikova perceives the Tuesday's session as a farce. "The coalition demonstrated plainly how it expects the supervision of SIS to be carried out. First it elected its own coalition representative as the chair and then the chair proposed a coalition representative as a vice-chair. Simply put, the coalition refuses to concede that it made up reasons to oust the representative of the opposition from the helm of the House Committee for the Supervision of SIS," she told journalists, adding that she perceives such conduct as an attempt to vet the opposition. In her view, the coalition doesn't have a genuine interest in the supervision of the secret service. Kolikova also criticised the coalition for not enabling a discussion on bomb alerts in schools, potential procurement of Pegagus spyware by SIS and statements by Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) about a potential threat of an attack on another constitutional official. mf/mcs