Opposition Calls on Danko to Resign from His Post Due to Rigorous Thesis

Bratislava, November 15, (TASR) - Opposition parties call on Parliamentary Chairman Andrej Danko (Slovak National Party/SNS) to resign from his post in connection with the information reported by the media that he compiled his rigorous thesis from several texts written by other people, TASR learnt from MP Lucia Duris Nicholsonova (Freedom and Solidarity/SaS) on Thursday. SaS calls on Danko to withdraw from public life and remove his JUDr. title from all public places in Parliament at his own expense. "If Danko fails to draw the last remnants of honour and decency and doesn't resign on his own, the Opposition will start collecting signatures to convene a special session with Danko's ouster being a sole point on the agenda," said Duris Nicholsonova. Matej Bel University (UMB) in Banska Bystrica should be examined as well, as Danko is not the only plagiarist at UMB, added Duris Nicholsonova. OLaNO party calls on Danko to either rebut these suspicions as soon as on Thursday, or return his JUDr. title and step down from the post of parliamentary chairman. "In normal countries politicians resign from their posts due to plagiarism. We could have seen several examples in the neighbouring Czech Republic," stated OLaNO. Non-parliamentary KDH and Together-Civic Democracy parties have joined the call for Danko's resignation, too. "He has disqualified himself from a public life not only by a clear plagiarism and violation of the law on rigorous theses, but chiefly by the way he reacted when the plagiarism was revealed," said Together leader Miroslav Beblavy. According to Boris Kollar of We Are Family, it's evident that frauds are a part of Danko's private life as well, giving the case involving his rigorous thesis as an example. "Therefore, the party believes that a person like this has nothing to do in politics," said Kollar. Leader of non-parliamentary Progressive Slovakia Ivan Stefunko noted that Hungary, Spain, Germany and the Czech Republic are countries where ministers and a president have stepped down when mere suspicions of plagiarism occurred. "The second highest post in the country cannot be occupied by a person facing such a serious suspicion as plagiarism of his rigorous thesis," stated Stefunko. Danko earlier on Thursday said he won't comment on the issue of his rigorous thesis until the respective commission takes up a stance on it. His spokesman Tomas Kostelnik said that "if Parliamentary Chairman Andrej Danko were to react to every accusation by Dennik N daily, he'd be doing nothing else all day long". Dennik N on Thursday wrote that the parliamentary chief compiled the rigorous thesis that he submitted in the year 2000 from several texts written by other people. According to the daily, the first 20 pages after the introduction were copied from a Czech publication called 'Basics in Administrative Science' by Dusan Hendrych, while extensive other parts of Danko's thesis were copied as well. The daily recently pointed to the fact that Danko's thesis matches a rigorous thesis written by lawyer Daniel Pisak, who defended it a year after Danko - in 2001. The Academic Senate of Matej Bel University (UMB) in Banska Bystrica has created a commission to deal with rigorous theses and suspicions of plagiarism at the university. The commission will submit the results of its examination and draft proposals to the Academic Senate chairman by January 11, 2019. ko/mcs