Danko Offers House Vice-chair Post to Huliak, Wants Him to Return to SNS Caucus

Bratislava, January 21 (TASR) - Junior governing Slovak National Party (SNS) leader and House Vice-chair Andrej Danko has offered the post of House vice-chair to MP Rudolf Huliak (Independent) while demanding the return of the MPs around Huliak to the SNS caucus in return, Danko himself has confirmed for TASR, adding that he's supposed to meet Huliak at a meeting of the SNS caucus on Tuesday afternoon. Huliak sent an open letter to the SNS chairman at the weekend, asking him for a personal meeting with the aim of "resolving the critical situation that has persisted for the past five months." He views the current political situation very negatively, saying that it has been like this for the past year and has even escalated in the past few months. He wants to government to last throughout the entire electoral term and has declared his full support for the governing coalition, especially Premier Robert Fico (Smer-SD). "We are interested neither in a snap election, nor in a caretaker government, quite the opposite - we are interested in this government ruling until the next regular general election in 2027," wrote Huliak, who is the leader of the extra-parliamentary National Coalition party. Huliak has confirmed that he'll come to the meeting with Danko on Tuesday afternoon. "I don't know yet what Andrej Danko is offering. I've been invited to his caucus meeting at 2 p.m.," he told TASR. Huliak along with MPs Ivan Sevcik and Pavol Luptak quit the SNS caucus last autumn. They announced that they still planned to stick to the coalition agreement and support the government. They explained their departure by saying that after they demanded a change in the name of the SNS caucus and greater visibility for their party, they began to be ignored and "completely cut off." Subsequently, the MPs around Huliak asked for one ministry from SNS's portfolio, preferably the Environment Ministry. ko/df