House Rejects SNS Proposal to Extend Electoral Term of Local Gov'ts to Six Years

Bratislava, 10 June (TASR) - Parliament on Tuesday turned down a draft amendment to the Slovak Constitution via which MPs of the coalition Slovak National Party (SNS) wanted to extend the electoral term of local governments from the current four to six years. The change should have applied to both local and regional elections. In line with the draft, mayors of towns and villages, regional governors and municipal and regional councillors should have served for longer. The authors of the draft amendment believed that extending electoral terms to six years would create conditions for a more stable and predictable management of local governments, thereby providing continuity in the leadership of towns, villages and regions and allowing development programmes and investment projects to be more efficiently planned and implemented. According to SNS, a four-year electoral term often doesn't allow strategic projects to be implemented more effectively in practice, "as a large part of the term in office is dedicated to analysing and preparing new projects". The amendment's submitters stated that the terms in office of local governments in some other EU countries is also longer than four years. ko/df