Parliament to vote on ousting Speaker of Parliament

An Opposition-initiated parliamentary session aimed at ousting Parliamentary Chairman Andrej Danko will take place on Thursday, Parliamentary Vice-chair Béla Bugár (Most-Híd) announced on Tuesday. OĽaNO-NOVA leader Igor Matovič last week stated that employees of the Parliament Office have been reading letters sent to MPs without the intended recipients being aware of this and that the correspondence has been censored. "Andrej Danko has violated the constitutional right of people who send letters to members of Parliament," said Matovič. However, the Opposition's initiative faces dim prospects, as leader of the main coalition Smer-SD party and Prime Minister Robert Fico has stated that he sees no reason to debate Danko's ouster and that Smer won't vote in favour of such a motion. Unless the House first endorses the agenda of such a session, the session won't even begin. Matovič last week went public with a claim that Danko had ordered Parliament Office chief Daniel Guspan to introduce a policy of opening letters addressed to individual MPs if they are sent by private individuals or if they are apparently anonymous. If the letters are found to contain profanities or other offensive content, they shouldn't be forwarded to the recipients, but archived and shredded after three months. Guspan rejected Matovič's accusations, describing such claims as lies. He also called on Matovič to present evidence for his claims or to desist from making the accusations.