Rasi: If House is to Have More MPs from Regions, Change to Constitution Required

Bratislava, April 8 (TASR) - An opportunity posed by a debate preceding the second reading of planned changes to the Constitution could be used also to take out a sentence from the Constitution, according to which the entire Slovakia is a single electoral district, as this was put into the Constitution artificially at the initiative of 'Slovakia' party chair Igor Matovic and it blocks any changes to the Election Act that would enable the inclusion of a greater number of lawmakers from Slovak regions in Parliament, House chair Richard Rasi (Voice-SD) told TASR TV on Tuesday. Rasi pointed out that more than one-third of legislators in Parliament hail from the capital city and data from surveys indicate that changes to increase the regional representation in Parliament are supported by the majority of voters. "The people living in the regions don't want to have a parliament that is more than one-third Bratislava parliament. I trust that if we managed to take that sentence away from the Constitution, it would open the door for a discussion on changes to the election system and the bolstering of regional principle," said Rasi. Voice-SD would be in favour of Slovakia switching to a mixed election system, with half of lawmakers elected under the current proportional system with preferential votes and the other half in a single-mandate constituencies in first-past-the-post system. mf