Parliament Still Unable to Start Wednesday's Session Due to Technical Issues

Bratislava, 22 April (TASR) - Parliament has so far been unable to start Wednesday's session due to technical issues. A technical break has been in place since the morning, and a meeting of Parliament's leadership followed shortly after 11 a.m. Subsequently, House Chair Richard Rasi (Voice-SD) announced that the session would resume only as of 2 p.m. Bills sponsored by the Agriculture Ministry should be discussed at that time. A traditional vote is also scheduled for 5 p.m. "If anything happens, I'll let you know, but this is the procedure for now," Rasi told MPs. Parliament is scheduled to sit until 8 p.m. on Wednesday. The technical issues first appeared in the morning, when the session failed to start at the usual time of 9 a.m. House Vice-chair Andrej Danko (Slovak National Party/SNS), who was chairing the session at the time, said that every effort was being made to get the system up and running. MPs also had to deal with technical problems on Tuesday (21 April) afternoon, when they were unable to log in with a microphone to make a factual remark. Parliament didn't deliberate for over an hour at that time. SNS caucus head Roman Michelko told journalists that the issue concerns the malfunctioning of microphones in the chamber. "Some one third of the microphones don't work immediately, but only after five to ten seconds," he explained, adding that if the malfunction isn't resolved by 2 p.m., MPs should switch to a different procedure. "If someone's microphone doesn't work for a factual remark, they'll go to the 'speaker's desk', that's all. Anyway, I hope that it will be resolved by then and that everything will take place in the standard way," he said. ko/df