On Thursday, the Coalition refused to support the Opposition-initiated extraordinary session devoted to a no-confidence vote in Parliamentary Chairman Andrej Danko from the Slovak National Party. According to the opposition party OLaNO-NOVA leader Igor Matovic, they showed their disdain for the people and the Slovak Constitution. The Opposition wanted to oust Danko over the scandal concerning the opening of letters addressed to MPs by the Parliament Office. The House failed to adopt the parliamentary session agenda earlier in the day, as only 54 MPs out of the 131 present voted for it.
Parliamentary Chairman Andrej Danko on Thursday publicly declared that he had never ordered the Parliament Office staff to read letters addressed to individual MPs, and he himself had not read any letters sent to other lawmakers, either. In the same breath, Danko at the press conference stated that if the Opposition provided evidence for such accusations, he would resign. Nonetheless, Danko said that he could not release the list of the purported recipients without their prior consent. The Opposition, meanwhile, has been demanding such a list be released in order to know whether letters sent to coalition MPs were also opened.
Igor Matovič stated last week that Parliamentary chair Andrej Danko instructed employees from the Parliamentary Front Desk to open letters addressed to lawmakers if they were being sent by a person - anonymously or under a full name - and were any profanities or offensive content to be found in a letter, then they were given instructions not to deliver the correspondence to the lawmaker, but instead to archive it for three months and then shred it. According to PM Robert Fico, the mistake was made on the side of the office's employee, who should be punished, not Andrej Danko.
