Sutaj Estok: Our Democracy Will Only Be as Good as We Are Ourselves

Bratislava, 17 November (TASR) - Our democracy will only be as good as we are ourselves, stated Interior Minister and leader of the coalition Voice-SD party Matus Sutaj Estok on the occasion of the 36th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, appealing for decency and mutual respect. "Without dialogue, willingness and an ability to cooperate, listen to each other and respect each other, our society will be fragmented. Society will continue to suffer. We'll suffer from the absence of dialogue, without which democracy is too hard to swallow. I wish all of us, the whole of Slovakia, myself, and my political opponents and competitors the decency, calm, prudence and responsibility that the people on the squares and those who led them had in those historic days," he posted on social media. According to Sutaj Estok, 17 November is a reminder of decency. "It is paradoxical that even people who were completely different - dissidents and communists - were able to be decent to each other at that time ... The tool used by both sides was dialogue. Through it, they were able to find common ground and interests so that the transition from socialism to democracy would be a gentle one, without casualties," he said, claiming that the old regime wouldn't have ended if the opponents at the time had behaved like the current opposition and opted for vulgarity and personal attacks instead of discussion. am/df