Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Bother in Brussels


To cheer up the Slovak socialists, here's a picture of somewhere I'd rather be than Brussels on a dreary and dimpsy Tuesday.
Can anybody put me out of my misery and tell me where it is?
and can I go there?
now?

European Socialists are having a party - what if nobody brings a bottle?
On Thursday 12 October, the PES (Party of European Socialists) is having a meeting in Bruxelles to decide whether to kick out the Slovak socialist party, SMER (no relation to SMERSH....) because of its government coalition alliance with the SNS, a controversial right-wing nationalist party.
Prime Minister Robert Fico of the Slovak socialist party SMER (the name means 'direction') won the elections in June 2006 and entered into a dodgy coalition with the SNS (Slovak National Party) led by mayor of Žilina Ján Slota and cuddly Vladimír Mečiar's band of brutes the HZDS-LS (Movement for a Democratic Slovakia-People's Party).
Slota is up for re-election as mayor in December and, if successful, he will become the longest serving mayor of a Slovak town since change of regime in 1989.
He has been mayor of Žilina since 1990, another term would be his fifth in the post.
The SNS is well-know for its extreme politics and harsh rhetoric, targeting minorities such as Hungos, homos and Roma (how they'd loathe to be lumped together...).
According to Slota, ‘Hungarians are the cancer of the Slovak nation’, ‘Slovaks should jump into their tanks and flatten Budapest’ and ‘the best policy for Gypsies is a long whip in a small yard’, just to mention a few of his trademark soundbites.
Ironically Slota's fan base is in the virtually Magyar-free zone of northern Slovakia.
Mečiar is a deeply shifty former boxer who in the mid-nineties tried to take Slovakia back to those good old Medieval days and when in government led Slovakia into international isolation.
I wouldn't normally bother my brain with thinking about politics having had quite enough of it, thank you kindly, when I reported from the dark and smoky corridors of the Hungarian Parliament.
If you ask me, they're all as bad as each other.
The Magyar and Slovak politicians are almost all chubby, sweaty, middle-aged men in bad suits with bad breath and all equally whiney about the past.
It's over, let it go.
Anyway, the Slovak socialists are going to get their bottoms beaten with a big bunch of nettles, and, as I spend my life writing about Slovakia, I really hope they pull themselves together.
In an interview with Danish magazine A4, PES President Poul Nyrup Rasmussen explained that, in 2001, the PES agreed that no socialist party could form alliances with parties that incite racial hatred.
He said 'We risk losing our legitimacy when criticising the government in Poland or in other countries if we don't keep our own house in order. The pan-European parties have a reponsibility to support European values and stand up against populism and nationalism'.
Hear hear.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

1YPpaT The best blog you have!

4:43 am  

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