Premier: Gov't Won't Take Any Steps Regarding People's Right of Assembly

Bratislava, January 23 (TASR) - The Slovak government won't take any steps regarding people's constitutional right to gather and organise protests, Premier Robert Fico (Smer-SD) declared following the Security Council meeting on Thursday. However, he claimed that there is a group that wants to misuse rallies in order to escalate tensions. He spoke about his concerns regarding a potential attempt to organise a coup in Slovakia. He called on citizens not to let themselves be misused by groups to attack Slovakia's constitutional order. "We have a structure here, funded from abroad and connected to the Slovak opposition, which wants to misuse the protests that people have a right to. It's very simple, they will try to provoke a kind of skirmish, then there will be attempts to get over the fences into the government buildings, the parliamentary building, the Presidential Palace, then you will witness these protesters being taken out by the security forces. There won't be 20 cameras like now, but 1,740 cameras from all over the world. A fascist, coercive image will be created for the Slovak government, as it is maintaining order and doesn't want to allow an attack on the constitutional order, and we are back in 2018. Sorry, but we won't let our country be disrupted," said Fico. Fico spoke about evidence that was presented at the council meeting. He also informed the media about a resolution adopted by the Security Council. The participants in the meeting confirmed Slovakia's foreign-political orientation based on EU and NATO membership and rejected the dissemination of untrue information in this regard. "In this provision of the resolution, we very clearly reject the lies spread by the Slovak opposition. This government has never taken and will never take any steps regarding Slovakia's foreign-political orientation, let alone steps that would question our membership of the EU and NATO," stated the premier. The Security Council stated in a resolution that it has taken notice of information collected by the security forces and intelligence services regarding the plans of the organisers of anti-government rallies to change the nature of the events into activities that would provoke the security forces into intervening against protesters with the aim of increasing social tension, destabilising the state and changing the political situation. ko/df