BETTING
AND GAMING
On sale now
NEWS
MP goes independent
MP Andrej Ďurkovský left
the KDH party after ques-
tions surfaced about several
transactions when he was
Bratislava's mayor. He will
stay as an independent MP.
pg 2
Slovaks in bomb blast
At least five Slovaks were at
Moscow's Domodedovo
Airport when a terrorist
bomb killed at least 35
people and injured many
others, including well-
known Slovak actress Zuz-
ana Fialová.
pg 3
OPINION
Weak choices
With the departure of anMP
from the KDH party and the
weakening of the
coalition's majority in par-
liament, the governing
parties are now paying the
price for choosing poor
candidates.
BUSINESS FOCUS
pg 5
Downturn hits gaming
Slovaks like gambling and
had it not been for the eco-
nomic crisis the amount
wagered in various ways
would have continued to
soar over the past two years.
pg 6
Poker ups its ante
Over the past 10 years the
game of poker has become
very popular across the
world and several Slovak
players have made it into
the world's top ranks .
pg 7
CULTURE
Discovering oneself
A Canadian dancer, choreo-
grapher and ethnographer
of Azeri-Persian ancestry
brought his unique story-
telling dance performances
to Bratislava in December.
pg 11
SELECT FOREX RATES
€ benchmark as of January 27
CANADA CAD 1.37 HUNGARY
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Vol. 17, No. 4
Former prime minister Robert Fico said he respects all decisions made by Slovakia's Constitutional Court, despite its
ruling on January 26 that two laws enacted by his government in 2007 are unconstitutional.
Two Fico-era laws
struck down by court
SLOVAKIA’S Constitutional Court
delivered two major rulings in a
single day on January 26. It decided
that legislation passed by the last
government prohibiting private
health insurers from paying di-
vidends to their shareholders or
deciding what to do with their
profits violates Slovakia’s constitu-
tion. In the second case the Consti-
tutional Court ruled that an
amendment to Slovakia’s highway
construction legislation that per-
mitted the state to begin building
highways on privately-owned land
Crusade for police credibility begins
Top cop announces
sweeping changes
BY BEATA BALOGOVÁ
Spectator staff
HUF 272.00
TAILOR-made assessment criteria,
JPY 113.90
regular performance evaluations
PLN 3.90
and a new bonus system are all part
USD 1.37
of the latest crusade heralded by the
country’s top cop to build more
credibility and professionalism in
the Slovak police force. Police Corps
President Jaroslav Spišiak calls his
Monday, January 31, 2011 - Sunday, February 6, 2011
BY BEATA BALOGOVÁ
Spectator staff
before the land expropriation pro-
cess is completed – also the work of
the previous government – is un-
constitutional.
While the current government
of Iveta Radičová welcomed the
court’s decisions, the leader of the
opposition Smer party, Robert Fico,
who also led the previous govern-
initiative the most sweeping reform
since the end of communism more
than 20 years ago.
Spišiak said the new system
will impact everyone in the Police
Corps, from traffic police and of-
fice clerks up to senior officials
such as himself and will replace
what he called subjective evalu-
ations while offering clearer and
more exact criteria for assessing
the work of police officers.
“Our goal is to increase the
credibility of the police in
Slovakia,” Denisa Baloghová, the
spokeswoman of the Police
Corps, told The Slovak Spectator,
adding that Spišiak wants to
launch the new measures as
quickly as possible.
Photo: SITA
ment and had championed both
pieces of legislation, was somewhat
reserved, saying that he “would not
slam the court” for its decisions.
“We respect each and every de-
cision of the Constitutional Court,”
Fico told a press conference on
January 26, while calling on the cur-
rent government to change both
laws in a way that “achieves faster
highway construction” and pre-
vents what he said was “health in-
surers taking away people’s money”.
See DOWN pg 4
Interior Minister Daniel Lipšic
stated that if the reform succeeds
Slovakia’s police will enjoy credibil-
ity similar to those in the most-ad-
mired countries.
Advocates of the reform said that
previous ways of evaluating police
officers left too much room for sub-
jectivity and lacked clear, specific
performance targets.
Lipšic’s predecessor, Robert
Kaliňák, reacted by saying that
everything cannot be measured
through statistical data and that the
changes might lead to individualism
rather than the teamwork that he
said the previous evaluation system
supported.
See COP pg 2
FOCUS
of this issue
E-pay:
help or
hindrance?
BY MICHAELA TERENZANI
Spectator staff
SOME of those who depend on social bene-
fits from the state might soon have to
learn to live with less cash in their pock-
ets. Five villages in eastern Slovakia will
this summer trial a new e-pay system
which the Labour Ministry believes could
become an effective tool against loan-
sharking – or usury, as it is still referred to
in Slovakia – and poverty.
The e-pay pilot project will be launched
at the end of June in five eastern Slovak vil-
lages (Spišský Hrhov, Sveržov, Hlinné,
Čičava and Pečovská Nová Ves), where it
will affect slightly fewer than 600 people.
The system provider will be chosen by
tender, to be launched in February. Inter-
national bidders are expected to compete.
There are about 189,000 recipients of
social benefits in Slovakia, and over
360,000 individuals who depend on them.
Under the new system, every beneficiary
will get a bank account and an associated
e-pay card. Instead of cash payments, the
allowances will be transferred directly to
recipients’ accounts.
See CASH pg 3
Rental plan
proposed
for airport
BY BEATA BALOGOVÁ
Spectator staff
THE STATE has taken its latest step to-
wards developing a new model for the op-
eration of Bratislava Airport, which five
years ago came within a hair’s breadth of
privatisation. It is now clear that M.R.
Štefánik Airport in Slovakia’s capital will
not be privatised during the term of the Iv-
eta Radičová government, at least accord-
ing to recent statements by state officials.
In mid-December 2010, Transport Min-
ister Ján Figeľ said that the means to bring
what he called a strategic partner into
Bratislava Airport should be determined by
the end of February, adding that ‘entry’
does not necessarily mean ‘sale’ since there
are also other options. A month later, his
predecessor as minister, Ľubomír Vážny,
suggested that if the state no longer wants
to operate the airport it should rent it based
on a concession agreement rather than
selling it. Now the Ministry of Transport,
in a draft proposal for the further develop-
ment of Bratislava Airport, seems to agree.
See FLY pg 9
2 January 31 – February 6, 2011 NEWS

Citizenship law’s fate still uncertain
THE GOVERNMENT has
agreed a draft revision of the
Citizenship Act, which was
amended shortly before last
year’s parliamentary elec-
tions by the then-govern-
ment of Robert Fico. The law
currently allows citizens
who acquire the citizenship
of another state (apart from
by birth or marriage) to be
stripped of their Slovak cit-
izenship; the amendment
would remove this provision.
At the same time,
however, the cabinet ap-
proved a proposal by the
Christian Democratic
Movement (KDH) to ban
dual citizenship for police,
army, intelligence services
and security officers. Public
officials who work with
classified documents will
also be banned from holding
dual citizenship, the Sme
daily reported.
MPs of the prevailingly
ethnic-Hungarian Most-Híd
party are expected to vote in
favour of the draft, although
many of them expressed re-
servations. Most-Híd MP
Edita Pfundtner said the
draft law would punish
state employees, Sme wrote.
The coalition cannot be
sure of getting all its MPs to
vote for the law when it is
presented to parliament, as
four Freedom and Solidarity
(SaS) MPs grouped in the
Ordinary People faction
have said they will only
support an amendment if it
restricts dual citizenship to
people who stay, study, are
employed or conduct busi-
ness in a foreign country
for at least two years, or
have close family ties to
another country.
Since the exact wording
of the draft revision has yet
to be released, coalition
deputies are still waiting to
express their opinions, the
SITA newswire reported.
MP departs KDH
BY MICHAELA
TERENZANI
Spectator staff
THE UNEXPLAINED issues
and alleged scandals swirling
around Bratislava’s former
mayor, Andrej Ďurkovský,
have proved unbearable for
his party, resulting in
something of a velvet break-
up between the Christian
Democratic Movement (KDH)
and its long-time member,
who was elected last year as
an MP for the party.
Ďurkovský is the first MP in
this parliamentary term to
leave his party caucus and be-
come an independent, but he
has promised to remain faith-
ful to the ruling centre-right
coalition. Observers note that
his departure does not mark
the end of the story.
Ďurkovský announced his
decision to quit the KDH after
a six-hour-long meeting with
the party’s presidency on
January 24 which was con-
Andrej Ďurkovský
vened to allow him to explain
his conduct in two cases in
particular. Both arose from his
tenure as mayor of the capital,
which ended late last year. The
first concerned alleged hidden
privatisation and questionable
financial transactions at
Bratislava’s water utility, BVS;
the second was his alleged
overstepping of authority re-
garding the planned demoli-
tion of the city’s Culture and
Leisure Park (PKO).
Ďurkovský denies any
blame and maintains that
Photo: TASR
some of the information that
appeared in the media is
false. However, he said he
was leaving the party in order
not to harm it and vowed to
clear his name and then re-
join the KDH.
Opinion divided within KDH
One member of the KDH
leadership, after hearing
Ďurkovský’s defence called on
him to give up his parlia-
mentary mandate, but
Ďurkovský refused to do this,
saying that he felt a sense of
responsibility towards his
voters, referring to the almost
11,000 preferential votes he
received in the 2010 election.
KDH deputy chairman
Daniel Lipšic, who is the cur-
rent interior minister, later
admitted that it was he who
had demanded that
Ďurkovský leave parliament.
He said that Ďurkovský was
not able to explain some grave
suspicions regarding his con-
duct as mayor and his depar-
ture from the KDH was the
only possible solution.
“If he hadn’t left the KDH,
he would have been left,” Lipšic
told journalists, adding that he
cannot imagine Ďurkovský re-
turning to the party.
KDH chairman Ján Figeľ
said there was consensus
about the outcome, and said
he believed Ďurkovský acted
in line with his conscience,
the information available and
the competencies he had pos-
sessed as a mayor.
See KDH pg 9

Senior policeman caught taking bribe

THE HEAD of the Senec
traffic police was detained on
January 26 and charged with
ongoing acceptance of
bribes. The Interior Ministry
said he was caught red-
handed taking a bribe at his
workplace.
From September 2010 un-
til his arrest the officer al-
legedly accepted cash pay-
Twenty apply for top job at RTVS
THE PARLIAMENTARY
Committee for Culture and
Media has received 20 ap-
plications for the job of head
of the public-service broad-
caster Radio and Television
of Slovakia (RTVS). RTVS was
created on January 1 by the
merger of Slovak Radio (SRo)
and Slovak Television (STV).
The deadline for applications
was midnight on January 25;
three of the applications ar-
rived after that.
Parliament will chose the
director-general of the new
public-service broadcaster by
a simple majority after a pub-
lic hearing involving the
candidates. If none of the
candidates is selected, an-
other vote will be held, with
only the two candidates with
the highest number of votes.
The public hearings for
candidates start on February
7 and according to the deputy
chairperson of the commit-
tee, Magda Vášáryová, a vote
could “theoretically” be held
on February 11, the SITA
newswire reported.
Among the candidates
are well-known names such
as the acting head of RTVS
and former director-general
of Slovak Radio, Miloslava
Zemková, director-general of
the state-owned TASR
newswire, Jaroslav Rezník,
ments during working hours
and at other times at the of-
fice of the traffic police in-
spectorate in Senec.
Bribes were supposedly
paid to secure accelerated re-
gistration of motor vehicles,
and for the identity of
vehicles’ owners or keepers
not to be checked, the SITA
newswire reported.
and a former member of the
Council for Broadcasting and
Retransmission, Peter
Abrahám.
The application of ad-
vertising executive Fedor
Flašík, known for his work
on the election campaigns of
the Movement for a Demo-
cratic Slovakia (HZDS) and
Smer, came as a surprise. Ján
Fule, former head of the syn-
dicate of journalists, who
later served as the spokes-
person of the president, filed
his application after the
deadline and was ruled out.
Culture Minister Daniel
Krajcer, who was behind the
creation of RTVS, has not yet
expressed any preference for
a candidate, but promised to
do so after he had read their
proposals for RTVS.
“Those people who
already worked either in the
[licensing] council or in the
management of public-ser-
vice media could be the
favourites,” Vášáryová told
the Sme daily. There are
three such candidates now:
Zemková and Rezník, both
former Slovak Radio direct-
ors, and Abrahám, a long-
time member of the licens-
ing council.
Compiled by Spectator staff
from press reports
COP: Evaluations will affect bonuses
Continued from pg 1
Baloghová explained that the criteria
have been designed in such a way that they
will cover every police officer including
managers, differentiated according to the
specific tasks each carries out.
“Based on these criteria, each police of-
ficer knows exactly what they must do if
they want to receive positive marks,”
Baloghová said, adding that the new sys-
tem would motivate each police officer, in-
dividually, to perform those tasks which
are of highest priority for his or her particu-
lar role in the force.
Regarding drawbacks in the previous
evaluation system, Baloghová said it lacked
specific targets for an employee of the Po-
lice Corps to achieve as well as a system of
interventions or rewards for negative or
positive evaluations.
“The evaluation was done based on sub-
jective statements of supervisors in five-
year periods,” Baloghová told The Slovak
Spectator. “The evaluation was more or less
collective since indicators of entire units
were measured, which made it possible for
ineffective police officers, who did not con-
tribute to the results of the team, to slip
through.”
Baloghová added that in many cases
the positive results of a team were achieved
through the superior activity of dedicated
and honest police officers who in most
cases were not rewarded for their individu-
al efforts.
Police officials have been stressing that
the outcome of these evaluations will have
a direct impact on the bonuses that police
officers will receive. Baloghová added that
the new system will also provide police of-
ficers with a clear career ladder and provide
rules for possible personnel changes.
The criteria are still being fine-tuned
and should be complete by July 1, when the
new system will begin being used.
However, Slovakia’s traffic police are
already subject to many of the new aspects
of the system, Baloghová said, because road
safety enforcement has been unacceptable
so the police commanders started “sharp”
application of the criteria without tuning
them further.
Police officers face new rules. Photo: Sme
“Each road accident, including those
which have already occurred in January,
will negatively influence the evaluation
of traffic police patrols as well as their
supervisors,” Baloghová said.
Spišiak said that he had been plan-
ning the reforms since 2000 when he
managed the police department in
Dunajská Streda and after having spent
some time in Great Britain where, he
said, police officers are trusted and
highly regarded by the public.
“Police officers aren’t a closed com-
munity; they do not think that they are
the heroes and that citizens are an un-
avoidable evil who make their lives more
difficult,” Spišiak said, as quoted by the
SITA newswire, when explaining the
principles behind the reforms.
Kaliňák stated that it is not possible
to evaluate everything based on numbers
because police officers provide many
types of service and each crime is unique,
adding that he thinks the new system of
evaluation will promote a different ethic
among police officers from the one he
had supported, SITA wrote.
Kaliňák said he is curious about
which evaluation criteria will be spe-
cified for officers working as police tech-
nicians, within crime-scene units and as
police-dog specialists as well as those
who work in the offices that handle ID
cards and other documents.
Police officers were working hard
without this system of evaluation,
Kaliňák said, and he does not want po-
lice officers to become people who
merely fulfil certain statistical require-
ments without a visible human face.
Speaking to public-service Slovak
Radio, Kaliňák stated that he would also
incorporate into the system evaluation
of officers by the public, saying that this
was crucial and had not been men-
tioned. He also suggested that the public
should be involved in establishing po-
lice priorities.
Kaliňák seemed hesitant to make
more specific comments on the new
system, stating several times that he
only hopes that Slovak police will con-
tinue to gain more credibility, a trend
which he said had started during his
term as interior minister.
When explaining that each police of-
ficer will have a set of evaluation criter-
ia, Spišiak used a traffic police officer as
an example to illustrate how the system
would work: the officer would be evalu-
ated based on whether there were any
traffic accidents in his or her area dur-
ing a working shift.
“It is up to the police how they
achieve this,” Spišiak said, adding that if
there was ice on the road, for example,
the officer should stand at the spot to
warn drivers.
Each police officer will be evaluated
every month based on the established
criteria and quarterly evaluations will
potentially affect the officer’s salary,
Spišiak said. SITA wrote that there will
be three levels on the evaluation scale:
more than satisfactory, satisfactory and
unsatisfactory, that all evaluations will
be expressed numerically without writ-
ten statements, and that police officers
will lose part of their bonus if they are
rated unsatisfactory in a quarter.
If a police officer is rated as unsatis-
factory in two successive quarters he or
she can be transferred to another posi-
tion, SITA added.
Michaela Terenzani
contributed to this report
 NEWS January 31 – February 6, 2011 3

Slovaks in Moscow blast Democracy gets

AT LEAST five Slovaks were at
Domodedovo Airport in Mo-
scow when a terrorist bomb
exploded killing at least 35
people and injuring another
170 on January 24. Well-
known Slovak actress Zuzana
Fialová suffered injuries in
the blast and was hospitalised
in Moscow.
Fialová, her colleague
Ľuboš Kostelný and his sister,
were queuing for luggage
when a suicide bomber deton-
ated explosives which Russi-
an media reported consisted
of around 7 kilograms of TNT.
Kostelný told the Sme daily
that the group was standing
about 4 metres from the
bomber, whose identity has
not yet been confirmed. Un-
named security sources cited
in the Russian media have
suggested a link to the
troubled North Caucasus re-
gion.
Zuzana Fialová
The Sme daily wrote that
no Slovak had ever experi-
enced a terrorist attack at
such close proximity.
“It threw Zuzka on the
ground,” Kostelný said,
adding that she was hit by
several shards of the bomb
and one cut her ear. She also
suffered shock and was trans-
ferred to a Moscow hospital
where she remained on the
Photo: Sme archive
morning of January 25.
“It’s swinishness,” Fialová
said, in her only immediate
reaction to what had
happened. Her partner, Peter
Matulík, was in regular con-
tact with her and he also con-
tacted the Slovak Embassy in
Moscow and learned that mo-
bile phone connections in
Moscow, especially in the vi-
cinity of the airport, were
turned off for security reasons
by the Russian authorities,
“probably in order to prevent
someone else from setting of
another bomb by mobile
phone”, Sme reported.
The New York Daily News
website initially reported, in-
correctly, that Fialová had
been killed in the bombing,
according to the Slovak daily
Nový Čas.
Slovak media reported
later on January 25 that doc-
tors had classified Fialová’s in-
juries as moderate to severe,
and that she was due to un-
dergo surgery in Moscow. No
official information regarding
the surgery has been released.
The Foreign Ministry, at the
request of Fialová’s family,
said it would not provide any
further information about the
health of the actress.
See BOMB pg 5
an average grade
BY MICHAELA
TERENZANI
Spectator staff
THE QUALITY of democracy
in Slovakia improved in the
second half of 2010, accord-
ing to the independent In-
stitute for Public Affairs
(IVO). For the first time
since 2008, the overall
quarterly grade it awards for
the level of democracy in the
country, as judged by the
institute’s Barometer sur-
vey, dropped below 3.
Slovak democracy was
graded at 2.8 for the last
quarter of 2010, using the
same scoring scale employed
by Slovak schools, in which 1
is excellent and 5 is failing.
The 2.8 grade represented an
improvement of 0.3 points.
The overall average rating of
the quality of democracy for
“The last quarter of the
past year in the political
democracy of Slovakia was
marked by the continuation
and deepening of trends that
were launched after the ruling
Smer-SNS-HZDS coalition was
replaced by the SDKÚ-SaS-
KDH-Most/Híd coalition fol-
lowing the parliamentary
elections in 2010,” an IVO
press release stated. “Changes
in practically all the evaluated
areas had positive dynamics,
which put an end to the con-
sistent worsening of the rat-
ing which had been recorded
since the start of the IVO Ba-
rometer project in 2008.”
The IVO Barometer evalu-
ates the quality of democracy
in Slovakia on a quarterly
basis in five key areas: demo-
cratic institutions and a law-
ful state; legislation; protec-
tion and respect for human
and minority rights; media
freedom and public-service

CASH: Daily spending limits suggested 2010 was 3.2 according to the
IVO Barometer, an improve-
ment of 0.1 points compared
media; and the transatlantic
and European integration as-
pects of foreign policy.
Continued from pg 1 to 2009. See IVO pg 9

The beneficiary will then be able to use

his or her e-pay card to pay wherever there
is a terminal for cashless payments. The
Labour Ministry believes it will be able to
install terminals in all local shops, phar-
macies, etc, perhaps through co-financing
terminals for merchants.
To begin with, benefits sent through
e-pay will include the allowance for
people in material need, family allow-
ances, parental allowances, and the lump-
sum allowance paid on the birth of a child.
Less cash, fewer problems?
E-pay cards are often dubbed “cards for
the Roma” in the Slovak media, but the au-
thors of the idea have warned against such
stereotyping.
Miroslav Pollák, the government’s
proxy for Roma communities, whose of-
fice cooperated with the Labour Ministry
on developing the e-pay project, stressed
that this is not classified as a project for
the Roma.
“Certainly, [the Roma shantytowns]
motivated the project at the beginning,”
Pollák said. “That cannot be avoided, as
the greatest poverty and the biggest prob-
lems occur in the segregated communit-
ies, the Roma settlements.”
E-pay cards could become an effect-
ive tool in the fight against usury, non-
payment of utility and local taxes and
the inability of some beneficiaries to
manage the money they get in the form
of allowances.
“I really don’t think that e-pay cards
will do away with usury for good, but I
believe that we can at least build barriers
to prevent the usurers from doing well,
as they’ve been doing so far,” Labour
Ministry State Secretary Lucia
Nicholsonová said.
The original idea was to eliminate
cash from the lives of beneficiaries al-
most totally, but after criticism from the
non-governmental sphere the ministry
dropped that idea. Nicholsonová said
that a percentage of the part of their al-
lowance that a beneficiary must 'earn'
(by taking part in community work, for
instance) will be paid to them in cash.
The cash part could amount to around
€30 per month.
“Those who depend on social allow-
ances are often able to survive only thanks
Many residents in Slovakia's Roma settlements rely on state benefits.
to their ability to get food for much better
prices then they would pay in a shop, for
instance by buying eggs or milk from their
neighbours,” Nicholsonová explained.
“We cannot take this possibility away
from them completely.”
Limits to cash, limits to freedom?
Beneficiaries will be able to use their
money either without limits, or within
weekly or daily limits, basically depend-
ing on how well-disciplined they are
with their money. Daily limits (which
would be less than €5 a day) have been
criticised as violating the human rights
of the beneficiaries.
Nicholsonová said the limits will
only be applied to those who already face
limits through the institute of ‘special
recipient’ recognised by Slovak legisla-
tion. Under this system, beneficiaries
who have been deemed unable to man-
age their money and who use state bene-
fits for the basic needs of their family are
not paid their allowances directly, but
instead the cash goes to a special recipi-
ent (typically the municipality, but the-
oretically anyone approved by the state),
who then decides when and how much
of the allowance to give to the benefi-
ciary, according to their needs.
The data collected by the e-card sys-
tem will allow the respective authorities
to check how a recipient uses their bene-
fit payments, and decide whether limits
are needed.
Photo: SITA
“For us it is incredibly valuable
information,” Nicholsonová said. “As
soon as problems occur, a field social
worker will come and work with the fam-
ily. Because this is not about restrictions,
it’s really about explaining and helping
people to save and manage their money.”
Missing social workers
The success of the project will largely
depend on the cooperation between local
labour offices, municipalities, field so-
cial workers and community centres in
village. The existence of a community
centre and the willingness of the mayor
were major criteria for a village to be se-
lected for the pilot project starting this
year.
“Because if we want people to feel
that this measure is for them and not
against them, it’s going to take a lot of
work by field social workers and com-
munity workers, to go and explain to
people face-to-face why their village
launched the project,” Nicholsonová
said.
What might become a problem is the
lack of field social workers and com-
munity centres in Slovakia. The min-
istry believes it will be able to boost its
network of social workers in the com-
munities where they are needed – this is
one of the aims the government set out
in its programme statement.
Also see the interview to the right
Liberation, not
punishment
BY MICHAELA
TERENZANI
Spectator staff
SVERŽOV, a small village
near Bardejov numbering
fewer than 600 souls, will be-
come an ‘e-pay laboratory’
this summer. The 20 benefi-
ciaries of social allowances
who live in the village will
get their allowances on e-pay
cards rather than in cash.
The Slovak Spectator spoke
to Pavol Ceľuch, the mayor of
Sveržov, about the project.
TSS: Why did you want to
take part?
Pavol Ceľuch (PC): In
our village we have no prob-
lems with usury, non-pay-
ment [of utility bills and local
taxes], drugs or alcohol. But
since municipalities are wor-
ried about going into this ex-
periment, we decided to try
it out. We offered our village
as an alternative to the min-
istry, and they selected us.
TSS: What will it look like
in practice?
PC: We have municip-
ally-owned social housing
here, so we want to try to fa-
cilitate payments for that
through the e-pay terminals:
electricity, water, and com-
bustibles that we buy them.
Also taxes and fees that
everybody must pay would
go through the terminals. Al-
though, I repeat, we don’t
have problems with their
paying on time, we can
handle it with this rather
small number of people. We
believe that if we manage to
catch the problems early on
in the project, it might be
positive for the municipality
that we went into [the
project] and weren’t worried.
It’s also important that
the people are not worried.
The cards are not a punish-
ment. Everybody sees it as a
punishment, but I say no, on
the contrary, it’s liberation.
TSS: Do people in Sveržov
see it as a negative thing?
PC: After the information
that appeared in the media –
which I would call half-
truths, because they are not
lies, but they are not fully
true either – I feel like they
are ‘freaking out’, and they
are now getting worried.
They had no worries before,
when I told them that we
could go into this project.
They said ‘Alright, let’s try
it’. I never lied to them, or
promised them something
and did not live up to my
promise. There is mutual
trust between me and them.
And now I have to admit
I am a bit disappointed with
some of the news. Last night
I saw [the e-pay cards]
presented on TV as a sort of
whip for those who will be
using them. It’s true that it’s
going to be a whip for the
negligent ones, but for those
who observe their duties, the
card will be a liberation. So
don’t write negatively about
it. The cards are not a pun-
ishment for these people;
they are a punishment for
the usurers.
4 January 31 – February 6, 2011
Heating company director sacked
THE DIRECTOR of the
Zvolenská Teplárenská heat-
ing company, Juraj Králik,
nominated by the Freedom
and Solidarity (SaS) party,
will be summarily sacked,
SaS chairman Richard Sulík
told the media on January 25.
Sulík’s action came after
questions about previous de-
cisions by the director in a
similar post were raised by
Prime Minister Iveta
Radičová, the TASR news-
wire reported.
Radičová stated that
Králik had worked in 2008 as
the director of the Žilinská
Teplárenská heating com-
pany, was nominated to that
post by the Slovak National
Party (SNS), and that during
Better economic growth forecast
BANK analysts’ GDP growth
forecasts for 2011 are more op-
timistic than they were at the
end of 2010. In a regular sur-
vey carried out by the Nation-
al Bank of Slovakia (NBS), the
analysts, on average, projec-
ted Slovakia’s economic
growth in 2011 at 3.6 percent,
up slightly by 0.1 percentage
point from December's estim-
ates, the SITA newswire re-
ported.
The bank analysts also re-
vised their anticipated infla-
tion rates modestly upward
for 2011, forecasting an infla-
tion rate, as measured by the
Harmonised Index of Con-
sumer Prices, of 3.7 percent.
In the last month of 2010, the
analysts had projected an in-
flation rate for 2011 of 3.6 per-
cent.
The European Bank for
Public sector pushes up jobless rate
THE UNEMPLOYMENT rate
in Slovakia is being pushed
up by layoffs in the public
sector while private sector
hiring is attempting to bring
it down, Michal Mušák, an
analyst with Slovenská
Sporiteľňa bank, told the
TASR newswire.
Mušák said the number
of unemployed Slovaks will
continue to grow during the
remaining winter months,
Ministry nixes rail holding firm
THE TRANSPORT Ministry
has discarded a plan de-
veloped by the previous gov-
ernment to form a holding
company called Slovenské
Železnice that would have
clustered Slovakia’s three ail-
ing state-owned railway
companies, while retaining
the independent legal status
of each firm, the SITA news-
wire reported.
The ministry stated that
neither it nor the European
Union institution favour the
his tenure a sale of excess
emissions quotas “cost the
state more than €800,000”.
The Sme daily also wrote
that Žilinská Teplárenská
was in the portfolio of state-
owned companies controlled
by SNS, with the wife of Mil-
an Vendrinský, a business-
man linked to SNS chairman
Ján Slota, sitting on the
board of directors and
Alžbeta Porubcová, Slota’s
daughter, serving as a mem-
ber of the company’s super-
visory board.
Králik was nominated by
SaS to be the director of
Zvolenská Teplárenská after
the new government was
formed following the 2010
parliamentary elections.
Reconstruction and Devel-
opment (EBRD) also increased
its estimate of Slovakia’s GDP
growth for 2011. Based on the
latest release from EBRD, the
bank expects the Slovak eco-
nomy to grow by 3.7 percent
in 2011 compared to the
growth rate of 3.5 percent it
predicted last October.
The prognoses offered by
the banks and the EBRD are
more optimistic than the
most recent estimates made
by Slovakia’s central bank and
the Finance Ministry. The
latest official forecast pub-
lished by the central bank in
December 2010 projected
3-percent growth in GDP for
2011. In its prognosis made in
September 2010, the Finance
Ministry said Slovakia's GDP
growth for 2011 would be 3.3
percent, SITA wrote.
but he expects a gradual de-
crease in the unemployment
rate as of March.
“In view of the relatively
moderate speed of economic
recovery, we can be justifi-
ably concerned that the un-
employment rate will de-
crease rather more slowly
than it increased between
the summer of 2008 and the
spring of 2010,” Vladimír
Vaňo of Volksbank told TASR.
plan tailored by former
transport minister Ľubomír
Vážny. Current ministry of-
ficials prefer three separate
companies, saying this en-
ables more transparent fund-
ing and better conditions for
open competition which will
increase quality demands
and reduce costs, according
to Ľubomír Tuchscher, the
director of the Transport
Ministry’s PR department.
Compiled by Spectator staff
BUSINESS / NEWS
DOWN: Laws ruled unconstitutional
Continued from pg 1
Observers pointed out that
it has taken several years for
the court to deliver the ver-
dicts, during which time Fico’s
government was replaced by
the Radičová-led centre-right
coalition following parlia-
mentary elections in 2010. The
Finance Ministry revealed in
mid January 2011 that the gov-
ernment had spent more than
€15.5 million in legal fees de-
fending the law on health in-
surers’ profits in international
arbitration procedures, the
SITA newswire reported.
Finance Minister Ivan
Mikloš reacted to the rulings
by saying that when the legis-
lation was being pursued by
Fico’s government the then
opposition, as well as profes-
sionals, had warned that it
could significantly damage
the citizens of Slovakia as well
as the country itself.
“It [the ruling] clearly
shows that steps by the previ-
ous government were irre-
sponsible in this area,” Mikloš
said, as quoted by SITA.
Regarding the legislation
commonly referred to as the
expropriation law, the Consti-
tutional Court ruled that
neither the state nor any other
body can start building high-
ways on property that is not
fully owned by them. The
court in its press release said
that the affected owners were
in fact disadvantaged com-
pared to other owners of land.
The challenged provisions al-
lowed a situation in which
they formally remained own-
ers of the real estate, but de
facto could not carry out tradi-
tional rights of the ownership
law, the court wrote.
The Constitutional Court
also ruled that the health in-
surance legislation funda-
mentally restricted the prop-
erty rights of health insurers’
shareholders. According to
the court, the government in-
terfered in insurers’ right to
do business in health insur-
ance by depriving them of the
right to make autonomous
decisions over the use of their
profits. It found that the re-
striction was not in accord
with the constitution.
Fico, who is now a deputy
speaker of parliament, had re-
fused to represent parliament
at the Constitutional Court
hearing in the health insur-
ance case. Mikloš suggested
that this showed Fico was
afraid to defend the decisions
of his own government, the
TASR newswire reported.
Nevertheless, Fico said
that the Constitutional
Court’s ruling was a pyrrhic
victory.
“If one owner of a garden
is to stand against the public
interest, then deputies of the
current ruling coalition have
achieved a pyrrhic victory,”
said Fico. “Is there a general
interest in highway construc-
tion? There is. Slovakia is los-
ing competitiveness because
it has been slowing down
highway construction. I am
The court enforced land ownership principles . Photo: Sme
calling on the government to under the original law, to
prepare a new law that makes when the final inspection of
possible the fast construction the construction is underway.
of highways.” The original law permitted
this method only in excep-
The expropriation law tional cases. The change in
the law is estimated to have
According to the court’s of- affected almost 39,000 prop-
ficial release, the legislation erty owners with land on or
on one-time measures pertain- adjacent to the planned
ing to highway construction highways, according to the
put inappropriate pressure on Sme daily. Of these, expropri-
all owners to be forthcoming ation orders were filed against
towards the builders of the 1,338 owners; most of the oth-
highways. The challenged ers are believed to have sold in
provisions quasi-legalised anticipation of being ordered
construction which would to do so.
otherwise be considered illegal Then-transport minister
by allowing construction of, in Ľubomír Vážny argued at the
effect, non-removable con- time the legislation was adop-
struction on property without ted that without the change
the consent of the property’s several additional years
owner, the Constitutional would be required to negoti-
Court found. ate with property owners be-
Interior Minister Daniel fore construction could begin
Lipšic said that the state will on the government’s ambi-
now have to pay compensa- tious programme to build
tion to people who have had new highways.
their land expropriated since Jozef Vozár, deputy head
the law came into effect. of the Institute of State and
“People in Slovakia will Law at the Slovak Academy of
have their ownership rights Sciences told The Slovak Spec-
protected now [thanks to this tator in 2008 that “achieving
ruling], because this law made construction through means
it possible to deprive owners that limit that which lies at
of their ownership rights in the core of ownership rights –
order to pave the way for im- preventing landowners from
portant construction projects defending themselves against
and their use,” Lipšic said, as expropriation or inequitable
quoted by TASR. compensation for their land –
In January 2008, a group of is unacceptable in a lawful
opposition MPs asked the Con- state”. He was convinced that
stitutional Court to review the the act contravened the Slov-
expropriation law and reques- ak constitution.
ted a preliminary injunction to
halt the use of the law for one- The health insurer
off extraordinary measures to dividend ban
acquire land to initiate state
highway and dual-carriage- The court decided that the
way projects. The court denied legislation pertaining to
the preliminary injunction but health insurers unacceptably
agreed to review the constitu- interfered with the right of
tionality of the amendment. private health insurers to run
Lipšic, at that time an MP a business. At the same time
for the Christian Democratic the content of their licence to
Movement (KDH), called the provide public health insur-
law an unconstitutional, flag- ance had been significantly
rant violation of ownership modified as well, the court
rights, one of the most basic said in its official release.
human rights. The Fico government de-
The Fico government cided in 2007 that providing
passed the amendment to mandatory health insurance
Slovakia’s highway legislation in Slovakia should not be a
in 2007. It changed the dead- profit-making business and
line for completing the expro- amended the law on health
priation process from before insurance to prohibit private
construction starts, as it stood health insurers from paying
dividends to their sharehold-
ers, requiring them instead to
channel any profits back into
the health-care system. The
law became effective in Janu-
ary 2008. The private health
insurers operating in Slovakia
objected that the legislation
was hostile to investments
made by their major share-
holders and two of the in-
surers subsequently presen-
ted their arguments before in-
ternational courts.
In 2008, a group of 49
members of the Slovak par-
liament also asked the Consti-
tutional Court to review the
law, arguing that the
amendment contradicted the
constitution as well as inter-
national laws.
Defending the legislation
in 2007, Fico told public broad-
caster Slovak Radio that the
previous, centre-right
government’s aim had been
“to allow someone, mainly
foreign firms, to access public
resources and gradually carve
off huge profits from these re-
sources. People are now re-
quired to pay money for insur-
ance premiums to the insurers
and it is absolutely unaccept-
able to us to allow someone to
keep part of this money”.
The European Commis-
sion started reviewing the le-
gislation in 2009 to determine
if Slovakia had breached EU
legislation and sent a letter of
formal notice to the country
to begin that process.
“It seems that the imposi-
tion of an absolute prohibition
on privately-owned public
health insurance providers
from using their profits other
than for the provision of public
health care in the Slovak Re-
public constitutes an unjusti-
fied restriction on the freedom
of capital movements,” the
spokesman for EC Commis-
sioner for the Internal Market
and Services Charlie McCreevy
told The Slovak Spectator in
2009.
Slovakia’s Association of
Health Insurers (ZZP) warned
several times that the legisla-
tion would conflict with in-
ternational agreements on
the protection of invest-
ments, as well with EU law
and Slovakia’s constitution.
ZZP director Eduard Kováč
told The Slovak Spectator at the
time that the adopted legisla-
tion interfered with the own-
ership rights of shareholders,
and that the state can interfere
with ownership rights only if
certain conditions are met: if
intervention is unavoidable; if
it is demonstrably in the public
interest; and if there is ad-
equate compensation.
Citing dissatisfaction
with market conditions in
Slovakia, private health in-
surer Európska Zdravotná
Poisťovňa left the domestic
market in 2008. Dôvera and
Apollo have since merged,
leaving only one other private
insurer, Union, in the market.
The two state-run health in-
surers, Všeobecná Zdravotná
Poisťovňa (VšZP) and Spoločná
Zdravotná Poisťovňa (SZP),
also merged in 2010.

QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
OPINION / NEWS
“Some of them perhaps see it as a sort of game.” Weak choices weaken bonds
Culture Minister Daniel Krajcer comments on the fact that 20 people FRAGILE is a good word for an
applied for the post of head of RTVS, the new state broadcaster amphora but a very bad one
for a ruling coalition, espe-
cially if “fragile” refers to the
January 31 – February 6, 2011 5
With Ďurkovský leaving the city hall had serious prob-
the KDH but keeping his MP’s lems with the conduct of the
mandate all the ruling coali- mayor”. What in the end
tion gets is a feeble promise broke Ďurkovský’s political

Diaľnice balance of influence between

the ruling parties and the op-
position.
of support, with no real ob-
ligation for the lone runner –
who in fact would probably
neck was the so-called hid-
den privatisation of the Brat-
islava water utility BVS
lysis, which openly said that The departure of former have been expelled from the shortly before last year’s mu-
BY LUKÁŠ FILA SLOVAK WORD someone within the adminis-
tration just took their docu-
Bratislava mayor Andrej
Ďurkovský from the Christian
nicipal elections. Also, a legal
analysis has shown that
OF THE WEEK
EDITORIAL
Special to the Spectator ment and changed the figures. Democratic Movement (KDH) Ďurkovský far exceeded his
That is unlikely to have is yet another reminder for authority when he approved
been the work of a zealous low- the ruling coalition led by Iv- the demolition of Bratislava’s
BY LISTENING to what Smer level bureaucrat. And given eta Radičová of what careful old cultural centre, PKO.
leader Robert Fico says, you the fact that former transport handling the coalition re- However, Ďurkovský was
would think he was a fully- minister Ľubomír Vážny made quires and how serious the one of the founding members
fledged communist: “Everyone it into Smer’s recently intro- consequences can be if coali- of the KDH, and party boss
will probably agree that the duced shadow cabinet, it is tion parties make poor choices Ján Figeľ has proved rather
speedy construction of high- also unlikely that he went be- when selecting their deputies. reluctant to state unambigu-
ways and the financing of hind the PM’s back and ma- The ruling coalition was ously that this is the end of
health care are vital public in- nipulated the largest public doomed to live with a fragile Ďurkovský’s role in the party.
terests, which override any in- contract in the country’s his- majority from its very incep- Political parties in Slov-
terest of the individual.” tory on his own. tion, when the Slovak Demo- akia keep resuscitating
This is no leaked wiretap or The main problem with cratic and Christian Union people whose performance
secret recording from the the previous government (SDKÚ), KDH, Freedom and in various posts is less than
party’s Christmas get-togeth- wasn’t that it put the interests Solidarity (SaS) and Most-Híd convincing. One way to do
er, but the opposition leader’s of the public over the interests decided to form a counter- this is to put them on the
official reaction to the Consti- of the individual. balance to Robert Fico’s mus- candidate list of the party.
tutional Court’s decision to paints a more colourful picture The main trouble was that cular Smer. A fragile majority BY BEATA BALOGOVÁ This is how one of the infam-
annul two key pieces of legisla- of Fico’s administration. it did the exact opposite – ap- seems almost to be part of the Spectator staff ous Slovak National Party
tion he adopted as prime min- When in the spring of last proving absurd legislation, genetic code of parties that ministers who “gave” Slov-
ister – the law enabling the year the cabinet approved a sending bulldozers onto oppose political forces like akia its best-known scandals
state to build highways huge increase in the price of private property, and hugely Smer. The latter still appeals of recent years has come to be
(diaľnice) on private property planned roads, it did so based overpaying for public con- to slightly less than half of Christian Democrats had he on the public payroll again,
even before the conclusion of on an analysis submitted by tracts to fill the pockets of its the nation, while the other not decided to leave. as an MP.
proper expropriation proceed- the Transport Ministry. cronies. half, plus 10 to 15 percent, Ďurkovský said that he Now, making the fragile
ings, and the law banning For months, the media has For the past four years the seems torn between parties would address all the un- majority even frailer, the Or-
private health insurers from pointed out that the numbers country wasn’t on the road to which are somewhat better answered questions and then dinary People faction within
paying dividends on profits. were fake, a fact confirmed communism. It was just Fico for voters than Smer but lack return. However, political SaS is also trying to pull some
However, this week’s other even by the consultancy firm and his pals on the super- its populist appeal. experience shows that those strings to prove that it has a
big news concerning highways that produced the original ana- highway to El Dorado. Yet if members of such explanations, even if they say in how the coalition
broad coalitions allow people transpire, will not wash should evolve.
with dubious baggage to run away the doubts and will While a fragile majority is
BOMB: PM expresses sympathy on their tickets they store up
problems for the whole coali-
leave a kind of stain on the
party until it goes through a
sometimes sufficiently
healthy to prevent a single
tion. Potential problems with substantial self-cleansing. party or a single leader from
Continued from pg 3 well as Foreign Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda, deputies’ lack of credibility And parties, by their nature, metamorphosing into a polit-
sent messages of condolence to their Russian surfaced during last year’s ill- rarely do that. Radičová said ical egomaniac, it also pre-
However, ministry spokesperson Ľuboš counterparts. fated vote to choose a new she hopes that Ďurkovský, vents political parties from
Schwarzbacher, did tell Sme on January 25 that Slovak Prime Minister Iveta Radičová general prosecutor, in which who now becomes the first focusing tightly on legisla-
Kostelný had had minor surgery in Moscow wrote in her telegram to Russian premier at least six ruling coalition independent deputy in this tion and makes many laws is-
the same day. Vladimir Putin, that she was shocked to hear deputies voted with Smer to parliament, will continue to sues of political compromise
The Slovak actors had taken a commercial about the airport attack. have Dobroslav Trnka re-se- vote in favour of government rather than public good.
flight from Vienna to Moscow to visit theatres “The unacceptability of terrorism is an ex- lected for the post despite the legislation. Perhaps the parties
and ‘do some shopping’, Sme reported. The pression of our deepest resolution and belief,” fact that Radičová had said Ďurkovský should not should take more seriously
Student Agency travel company told the Radičová wrote. “In the 21st century we can- she would quit if Trnka have been given the chance both the process of self-puri-
newspaper that it had sold five tickets on the not tolerate hurting innocent people.” stayed. If the knife-to-her- to run for the KDH. This be- fication, as well as ending
flight to Slovaks. The Slovak Foreign Affairs Dzurinda wrote that there is no excuse for back vote wasn’t coordinated came especially clear after their habit of treating par-
Ministry had no information about any other such acts of terror, Sme reported. by a specific party, which Interior Minister Daniel liament as a kind of purgat-
Slovaks who were at the airport during the “The Slovak Republic strictly rejects and would be an even worse situ- Lipšic, who is also a deputy ory where they can deposit
bomb attack. condemns any form of terrorist acts and ation for the coalition, then it chair of the KDH, called on people who have outstayed
In the aftermath of the bombing Slovakia’s violence,” Dzurinda wrote. still shows that the coalition Ďurkovský to give up his their welcome in other pub-
highest officials, Prime Minister Iveta parties cannot rely on their mandate, telling the Sme lic posts or who need to be
Radičová and President Ivan Gašparovič, as By Michaela Terenzani own deputies. daily that even “our people at rewarded.

Corrections – BOOK OF LISTS 2011 J ÁN PAL LO - Publisher

EDITORIAL
B E ATA B AL O G OVÁ - Editor - In - Chief
J AM E S THO M S O N - Assistant Editor
D O NAL D S PATZ - Assistant Editor
The Slovak Spectator apologises for the errors which appeared in its recent publication J ANA L IP TÁKOVÁ - Staff Writer
Book of Lists 2011. M IC H AE LA TER ENZANI - Staff Writer
D O M INIK A UH R ÍKOVÁ - Staff Writer
ZUZANA VIL IKOVS K Á - News Researcher
The correct information is as follows: LAYOUT, WEB & IT
TATIANA ŠTR AUC HOVÁ - Graphic Designer
R O M AN K R Á Ľ - IT
O Trenkwalder, a.s., listed in the Temporary Employment Agencies category: TO M Á Š PAL L O - Online Publishing
The CEO of Trenkwalder, a.s. is Mr. Luboš Sirota, e-mail address: l.sirota@trenkwalder.com.
SALES - FINANCES
B EATA F OJ TÍKOVÁ - Sales Executive
O Process Solutions s.r.o., listed in the Accounting & Tax category: M AR TINA Š M ATL ÁKOVÁ - PR and Marketing Manager
M AR TA F UK AS OVÁ - Advertising Assistant
The correct name of the CEO of Process Solutions is Mrs. Oľga Gajarská and her e-mail address is: D ÁŠA R EH ÁKOVÁ - Circulation Manager
olga.gajarska@ps-bpo.com.
The Slovak Spectator is an independent newspaper published every Monday by The Rock, s.r.o.
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6 January 31 – February 6, 2011

Betting on the 2009 presiden- BUSINESS FOCUS Next issue:

BETTING, GAMBLING AND GAMING

tial election proved popular

Poker is gaining in popularity

in Slovakia NORDIC COUNTRIES

Licences for games of chance

Gaming hit by Licences for games of chance and other similar games
issued by the Finance Ministry as of January 1, 2011

economic downturn
Slovaks are avid
bettors on almost
anything
BY JANA LIPTÁKOVÁ
Spectator staff
WOMEN and men in elegant
evening clothes surrounding a
roulette table in a casino, or a
group of fans watching a
sports match on TV in a betting
shop, or those sitting on stools
behind slot machines in a pub:
what do they have in com-
mon? A passion for games of
chance. Slovaks like gambling
and, had it not been for the
economic crisis, it is thought
that the amount of money that
Slovaks spent on various kinds
of gambling would have con-
tinued to soar over the past
two years.
Slovaks wagered almost €2
billion in 2010 on all kinds of
games of chance, in betting
parlours and via gaming ma-
chines, according to prelimin-
ary figures from the country’s
Finance Ministry, doubling the
€1 billion they spent in 2004.
Games of chance and online and parlour betting are popular among Slovaks.
The ministry’s statistics show
that wagering in Slovakia
peaked in 2008 at €2.163 billion,
rising by more than 20 percent
from the level of €1.786 billion
in 2007. But the economic crisis
that began at the end of 2008
clearly affected the gaming
business, with spending fall-
ing to €2.07 billion in 2009 and
then further still in 2010.
The Finance Ministry also
reported that Slovaks were
able to garner wins amounting
to €1.5 billion from their
wagers in 2010 and that the
Photo: Reuters
most popular form of
gambling was via gaming ma-
chines, with €617 million in
revenues, followed by video-
games, close behind with €577
million of revenues in 2010.
See GAME pg 8
- games of chance in a casino: three licences/three operators
- betting games (odds): six licences/six operators
- betting games (horse racing): one licence/one operator
- bingo lottery games: two licences/two operators
- number lotteries: one licence/one operator
- games of chance operated via the internet: one licence/one
operator
- immediate lotteries: 13 licences/one operator
- videogames: 20 licences/20 operators
- technical facilities operated directly by players:
15 licences /11 operators
- unspecified games of chance: one licence/one operator
Total bets and winnings in
all games of chance
Year Total bets Total winnings
in billions of € in billions of €
2010* € 2.000 € 1.497
2009 € 2.070 € 1.564
2008 € 2.163 € 1.583
2007 € 1.786 € 1.323
* preliminary results Source: Finance Ministry
Gaming
venues in Slovakia
Betting companies
Tipos, www.tipos.sk
- The state-owned national betting company.
Prvá slovenská stávková spoločnosť Niké, www.nike.sk
- One of the oldest private betting companies in Slovakia,
launched in 1991.

Question mark remains over Metropolis Fortuna SK, www.ifortuna.sk

BY JANA LIPTÁKOVÁ
Spectator staff
THE FATE of the grand Metropolis
project, a multi-functional complex
planned for a 30-hectare plot near Bratis-
lava, remains unclear. Last December
Slovakia’s parliament changed the law
that had given projects of this kind pref-
erential tax treatment. The developer of
Metropolis, Trigranit, said at the time
that it needed time to analyse the new
situation. The developer was expected to
have benefited from the preferential le-
gislation because a large casino, managed
by the biggest casino operator in the
world, was an integral part of the Metro-
polis complex.
Nevertheless, Slovakia’s parliament
approved the amendment to the law on
games of chance on December 8 and
ended the special tax category that had
been created for a ‘casino in a recre-
ational complex’. This preferential tax
treatment category had become part of
the law on the initiative of the previous
finance minister, Smer nominee Ján
Počiatek. The current Finance Ministry
then proposed last year that parlia-
ment delete the category, with the
stated aim being to unify taxation
treatment of all casinos, the SITA
newswire wrote.
The programme statement adopted by
the four governing coalition parties in 2010
stated that the law should revert back to the
legal standards regulating gambling and
moral hazards before 2009. Even though all
MPs in the coalition supported the Decem-
ber revision to the gambling law deputies
from the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party
made it clear that they did not oppose con-
struction of a casino complex like Metropol-
is, but only objected to deformation of the
tax system to support such a project.
The multi-functional complex raised
concern and opposition among a group of
citizens as well as politicians, particularly
those from the Christian Democratic
Movement (KDH). They expressed fears
that the casino would draw more criminal-
ity and prostitution into the country and
also lead to a higher number of pathological
gamblers. Last September opponents of the
Metropolis submitted a petition to parlia-
ment containing the signatures of 125,640
people opposed to the development.
The petition committee stated that a
mega-casino built outside Bratislava
would be a huge security risk for Slov-
akia, noting that since this would be the
largest casino in Europe they believed it
would be very detrimental to the
country’s moral environment and cul-
ture, SITA wrote. The petition called for
the complete scrapping of the idea of
building more casinos in Slovakia.
“For us it [the project] would be in-
teresting only if everything except the
casino remained,” a member of the peti-
tion committee, Michal Makovník, told
the Pravda daily in response Trigranit’s
proposal to reduce the size of the casino
within Metropolis.
Gábor Zászlós, the chairman of
Trigranit’s board of directors, announced
last October that the company would re-
duce the casino’s size from the origin-
ally-planned 27,000 square metres to
around 19,000 square metres, meaning
that the gaming area would make up
about 2 percent rather than 3 percent of
the whole project. The total price tag was
put at €1.5 billion.
Zászlós also said at that time that the
fate of the project would depend on
whether Slovakia’s parliament adopted
the proposed change in the law on games
of chance, adding that if the Finance
Ministry’s proposal was adopted Trigran-
it would think about relocating the en-
tire project to a location in Hungary.
The developer had stated that Met-
ropolis would create as many as 20,000
jobs during its construction and
provide around 9,000 jobs after its com-
pletion, as well as support and help de-
velop what the company called a neg-
lected tourism and services sector in
Slovakia. Trigranit also estimated that
the state would receive revenues of
around €600 million per year from the
project.
See PROJECT pg 8
- The Fortuna Entertainment Group was established in
2009 and is the largest betting operator in central Europe.
Originally a Czech firm, it has grown into a holding
company over time, and now also operates in the Slovak,
Polish and Hungarian markets.
Victory Tip, http://evictory.sk
- A Trnava-based betting company.
Poker
Herňa Golden Vegas, www.goldenvegas.sk
- The biggest poker gaming room in Slovakia at 1,000
square metres, it is located in the Hron shopping centre
in Bratislava’s Podunajské Biskupice district.
Monte Carlo Poker Club, http://pokerclub.sk/kosice/sk/
- This poker club in Košice’s Galéria shopping centre is
the biggest poker club in eastern Slovakia. Its capacity is
150 players (on 15 tables).
The Slovak poker portal, www.pokerportal.sk (in Slovak
language only)
Casinos
Casinos Slovakia, www.casinos.sk
- Operates five casinos across Slovakia: in Piešťany,
Košice, Bratislava (Casino-Cafe Reduta), Nitra and Žilina.
Regency Casino, www.regencycasino.sk
- Operates the casino in the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Bratislava.
Olympic Casino, www.olympic-casino.com
- Operates three casinos, two of which are in Bratislava,
in the Carlton Hotel and in the Eurovea complex, and one
in Trnava, in the Arkadia shopping centre.
Source: The Finance Ministry
Compiled by Spectator staf
 BUSINESS FOCUS January 31 – February 6, 2011 7

Ante up – poker gains FOCUS shorts

popularity in Slovakia
Two Slovak pros
have won more
than $500,000
HOWARD SWAINS
Special to the Spectator
OVER the past 10 years or so,
the game of poker has become
so popular that it can at times
seem almost impossible to
avoid. In the United States
and the UK, the late-night
television schedules fre-
quently feature poker tour-
naments, and even the main-
stream press routinely covers
the game. Countries as di-
verse as Italy, Brazil, Aus-
tralia and Taiwan are also
hotbeds of poker action, with
the traditional image of the
game as a seedy pastime for
gangsters long outdated.
Poker still takes place
amid the glitter of Las Vegas
and the glamour of the Carib-
bean, but it is also now found
beneath the sheen of the TV
studios, or on millions of
laptops worldwide. Its most
successful exponents can
graduate from their own stud-
ies to become celebrities and
millionaires. Anyone with an
internet connection can take
a shot at the big time, playing
24 hours a day for any amount
of money, thanks to the ubi-
quity and ease of online poker.
Somewhat belatedly, this
boom has now also shuddered
through Slovakia, where
poker has rapidly become as
accessible and as popular as it
is across the globe. A number
of clubs dedicated to the game
have popped up across the
country, complementing
poker rooms in the more tra-
ditional casino environment.
In January, a Slovak team
qualified to play in the World
Cup of Poker, hosted in the
Bahamas, and last month
PokerStars, the world’s
largest online poker room,
promoted the first Slovak to
its prestigious stable of
sponsored players. Dag
Palovič, a 36-year-old former
child actor and media execut-
ive from Bratislava, has
amassed more than $500,000
in tournament earnings in
the five years since he learned
the game, and is now a fixture
at the most prestigious tour-
naments around the world.
“About four years ago, I
didn’t know anybody who
played poker,” said Palovič,
interviewed in Florida on his
way home from a poker fest-
ival in the Bahamas, where he
captained the Slovak World
Cup team. “But I think now
about half of all people of uni-
versity age have at least tried
poker. It’s much more popular
than it has ever been.”
Dag Palovič Photo: Courtesy of PokerStars/Neil Stoddart
Certainly the statistics cor-
roborate Palovič’s assertion.
PokerStars said that in Decem-
ber 2010, there were more than
70,000 Slovaks with active ac-
counts on their website, com-
pared with only 1,000 at the
end of 2006. Similarly Betka
Stieranková, one of the man-
agers of the Monte Carlo Poker
Club, which opened in Košice
in 2008, said that on average 60
players join the live poker ac-
tion every night. “During three
years, the capacity of the room
has risen from 30 to 150 play-
ers, which says it all,”
Stieranková said.
A dedicated poker club
founded by Palovič, Golden Ve-
gas in Bratislava, has several
thousand members, and in
2009 it even hosted one of the
first European stops on the
World Poker Tour (WPT), a
series of high-stakes tourna-
ments with a significant tele-
vision following in the USA.
Organisers were actually dis-
appointed that only 100 play-
ers stumped up €4,400 to enter
– they were expecting more –
but cited a scheduling clash
with two other major tourna-
ments for the reduced turnout.
Nevertheless, the winner,
Hungary’s Richard Toth, took
home €104,000 and six Slovak
players ranked in the top 20.
The two principal factors
in poker’s remarkable explo-
sion are television and the in-
ternet, which have made the
game immeasurably more ac-
cessible for players and spec-
tators alike. In the late 1990s,
Channel 4 television in the UK
began screening “Late Night
Poker”, a series of games that
employed a unique innova-
tion. Mounted beneath a
glass-topped table were six
tiny cameras, allowing view-
ers at home to peek at a
player’s concealed cards. Sud-
denly, gambling’s biggest
secret – what is the truth be-
hind the poker face? – was
there for all to see, and viewers
could agonise along with the
players over every decision, or
coo as they pulled off auda-
cious bluffs, potentially worth
a fortune. The concealed cam-
era technology made poker a
compelling television spec-
tacle, and mobilised millions
of people across the globe to
learn the rules and join in.
In 2003, this new breed of
player was given even more
encouragement when an un-
known 27-year-old account-
ant from Tennessee named
Chris Moneymaker won
poker’s most sought-after
title: the World Series of Poker
in Las Vegas, which, at the
time, carried with it a $2.5 mil-
lion first prize.
If that alone wasn’t re-
markable enough, it soon
emerged that Moneymaker
had won his $10,000 tourna-
ment entry fee for only $40 by
playing poker on the internet.
Online poker sites had begun
offering “satellite” tourna-
ments for tiny amounts, the
winners of which could com-
pete on the grandest stage of
them all. Moneymaker’s jour-
ney had started in his own
home, and he had essentially
parlayed $40 into $2.5 million.
He quickly became an every-
man hero; if Moneymaker
could do it, so could anyone.
Palovič is a perfect ex-
ample of the post-Money-
maker player. He first learned
poker in 2006 when a friend
brought along a set of chips,
bought in the United States, to
a regular meeting at a coffee
shop. The group of friends
played initially for loose
change, but then Palovič, who
was a regular winner, was en-
couraged to enter a tourna-
ment at the Crowne Plaza
casino for Sk3,000 (about
€100), significantly more than
he had ever considered wager-
ing before. But he also won
that tournament and was bit-
ten by the poker bug. “We
loved the game,” Palovič said.
“It was something new, it was
for money, and of course I
loved the game much more be-
cause I was in profit.”
He established Golden Ve-
gas and then became a full-
time poker player on the in-
ternational circuit when he
merged the club with an in-
vestment company and took a
place on the board. He has
since made six-figure scores
in tournaments in Prague,
San Remo (Italy) and Las Ve-
gas, and often plays wearing a
Slovakia soccer scarf around
his neck.
By Palovič’s own admis-
sion, Slovakia currently lags
slightly behind many of its
neighbours in terms of poker-
playing talent, largely be-
cause there is hardly any
poker literature in the Slovak
language, nor a long-standing
history of the game in the
country. Of all Slovaks, only
Palovič and Ján Bendík have
accrued more than $500,000
in career tournament earn-
ings, which is made to look
paltry beside the $1.5 million
won by Jan Škampa, the top
Czech player, or the $2.5 mil-
lion of Hungary’s Dénes Kaló.
(The all-time leading tour-
nament earner is the Cana-
dian Daniel Negreanu, who
has amassed more than $14
million. Last November, an-
other Canadian, Jonathan
Duhamel, won close to $9 mil-
lion in a single tournament.)
Palovič, however, was re-
cently one of two poker profes-
sionals invited to participate
in a made-for-television poker
tournament recorded for the
Czech channel TV Nova, which
will be broadcast in the coming
couple of months. And he has
also penned the first poker
strategy book in Slovak, ambi-
tiously titled “How to Become
a Poker Pro”. Both ventures
will again expose more Slovaks
to poker, and no doubt increase
the interest in the country.
However, perhaps one of
the most obvious indications
of poker gaining a foothold in
Slovakia is the recent argu-
ment over the game’s legal
classification – a familiar bone
of contention in countless
other countries. Poker enthu-
siasts have long campaigned
for poker to be regarded as a
game of skill, rather than of
pure chance, aligning it more
with the likes of bridge or
chess than traditional casino
games such as roulette or
blackjack.
See POKER pg 8
LOTO jackpot winners set record
WINNING tickets were be-
ing cashed in thick and fast
last year and players of
Slovakia’s LOTO lottery run
by the state-owned Tipos
company were among those
most lucky. No less than 24
LOTO players won jackpots,
with prizes totalling over
€16.77 million. In 2010 LOTO
players benefited from a re-
cord number of wins com-
pared to 2009, when they
collected the top prize ‘only’
20 times, Tipos reported.
Players from Nitra and
Trenčín Regions were espe-
cially lucky, with five play-
ers in each region hitting
the jackpot. In Bratislava
and Prešov Regions, players
hit the jackpot only three
times in each.
The biggest payout last
Presidential betting attracts action
IN 2009 betting parlours
offered the chance to bet on
the winner of Slovakia’s pres-
idential election. Ivan
Gašparovič, who won the
election, was favoured in
both rounds of the election.
The Niké betting com-
pany reported that it lost
€66,388 when an unexpec-
tedly large number of people,
about 12,000, put their
money on the race, with only
about 10 percent tipping Iv-
eta Radičová to win. In the
run-off election the number
of bettors was even higher.
With Niké, the bettors
put down about €215,000 on
Gašparovič’s victory. The
odds on each candidate
changed over the course of
the campaign. It started at
1.5:1 for a Gašparovič victory
and 3.4:1 for Radičová. Later
the odds for Gašparovič
shortened to 1.2:1 and
lengthened to 4:1 for
Radičová.
A Košice citizen landed
the biggest win when he bet
€5,000 on Gašparovič when
the odds were 1.5:1 and
walked away with €7,500.
“This was the highest
bet,” said Niké’s director-
Police snag roulette cheat
A MAN who won at the roul-
ette wheel in a gaming house
in Vrútky ended up in the
hands of the police. Žilina po-
lice spokesperson Jana
Balogová told the media that
a 27-year old Vietnamese na-
tional had unlawfully af-
fected the operation of a
roulette wheel so that the
ball landed in fields of num-
bers and colours on which he
had earlier bet, the SITA
newswire wrote.
SITA wrote that the man
had laid down bets of about
€100 and had won as much
as €1,515. But he did not en-
joy his gain for long as
year was €1.696 million,
which went to a player in
Žilina Region in February.
Five LOTO players cashed in
winning tickets of over €1
million.
Slovaks are keeping up
with modern trends: in ad-
dition to placing their bets
and buying their lottery
tickets in bricks-and-mortar
offices they often use the in-
ternet or mobile phones.
The first top prize based
on a bet submitted via a text
message happened in March
2010 and paid €596,621. In
September a player who
bought a lottery ticket via
the internet won €795,500.
Tipos paid out over
€79.15 million in 2010 to
players in its number
games.
general, Otto Berger, as
quoted by the SITA news-
wire. “There was a large
number who bet €100, or a
few hundred euros. Actually,
we were the first to know
how the election would turn
out because those betting
would not put money on one
candidate and then vote for
the other.”
Niké also offered the op-
portunity to place bets on the
actual percentage of votes
that individual candidates
would get in the presidential
election, on which candid-
ates would advance to the
second round, and even on
the voter turnout.
The Fortuna SK betting
company also offered bets on
the presidential election and
had players submitting
between 1,200 and 1,300
wagers. The total amount in
the pot for Gašparovič was
around €50,000 and his odds
were at first 1.4:1, decreasing
later to 1.25:1. Radičová drew
bettors laying down a total of
€10,000 and the odds for her
success started at 2.5:1 and
gradually lengthened to 3.5:1.
The highest pay out by For-
tuna SK was €700.
shortly thereafter he was de-
tained by the police. The
erstwhile roulette expert has
already been convicted in
fast-tracked court proceed-
ings and sentenced to two
years in prison with one
year's probation.
Another crime happened
in a gaming house in Veľký
Krtíš on January 24. An un-
known duo of masked men
threatened the staff with a
gun and demanded money.
The staff handed over €1,000
to the robbers.
Compiled by Spectator staff
from press reports

GAME: A matter of luck, or skill?
Continued from pg 6
Videogames registered the
largest increase in customers
and money bet, with the Fin-
ance Ministry reporting that
€577 million was wagered via
this kind of gambling in 2010,
more than tripling the level of
€129 million in 2007.
Granting licences to busi-
ness for gambling, betting and
gaming machines is the re-
sponsibility of the Finance
Ministry and individual mu-
nicipalities. The Finance Min-
istry decides about licences for
games of chance while muni-
cipalities grant licences for
the use of gaming machines.
However, current national le-
gislation does not give muni-
cipalities the power to veto
whether gaming machines are
to be installed and used with-
in their territory.
If a licence applicant ful-
fils all the requirements under
the state law the municipality
must issue a licence. For that
reason Slovak towns and vil-
lages’ ability to restrict busi-
nesses offering what some call
a “moral hazard” from operat-
ing within their municipality
is very limited.
Many municipalities per-
ceive these restricted powers
as problematic. Even though
gaming machines bring addi-
tional revenue to municipal
budgets, some municipal offi-
cials say they would rather
deal with the loss of this rev-
enue than with the social
problems they perceive are
linked with pathological
gambling.
Slovakia’s Tax Directorate
reported that there were about
17,300 gaming machines oper-
ating in various venues
throughout the country in
2010.
Casinos
There are two dominant
companies operating casinos
in Slovakia. Casinos Slovakia
was established in 1990 and
opened its first casino in
Piešťany in 1991, according to
its website. It later opened a
casino in Prešov which later
moved to Košice. Its biggest
and most prestigious property
is Casino-Cafe Reduta in Brat-
islava which opened in 1994.
In 2007 it also opened casinos
in Nitra and Žilina.
Olympic Casino entered
the Slovak market in 2008 and
now operates three casinos: in
Bratislava’s Carlton Hotel, the
largest casino in Slovakia; in
the Arkadia shopping centre
in Trnava; and in the new
Eurovea complex on the banks
of the Danube in Bratislava.
Another casino, Regency,
operates within the Crowne
Plaza Hotel in Bratislava.
According to Jozef Skubeň,
the head of Olympic Casino
Slovakia, the popularity of
casino gaming in Slovakia has
been gradually growing but
the poor health of the eco-
nomy has affected the sector
and people are more cautious
when visiting a casino, the
TASR newswire wrote.
Slovakia is home to 17,300 gaming machines.
Skubeň’s ambition is to
make a visit to one of his
company’s casinos about
more than just gaming and to
offer visitors Las Vegas-style
entertainment interconnec-
ted with events such as film
premieres, live music, fash-
ion shows or poker tourna-
ments. Skubeň expects that
with such offerings an in-
vestment of €1.3 million in
the casino at Eurovea might
begin to have returns within
five to eight years.
The average guest at a
Slovak casino spends
between €35 and €50, Skubeň
said, adding that “there are
some players who play only
€5 but also those who play for
€5,000,” as quoted by TASR.
Many of the guests at
casinos in Slovakia are for-
eign tourists and Skubeň es-
timated that they make up
about 50 percent of the clien-
tele at Olympic Casino’s prop-
erties. Austrians and Italians,
coming from countries with
very old casino traditions, are
among regular visitors to
Slovakia’s casinos. Skubeň
added that younger Slovaks
visit his firm’s casinos more
often than do older Slovaks.
Betting parlours
Many Slovaks love play-
ing various kinds of lotteries
and betting on sports
matches as well as on other
kinds of events, for example,
political elections. In addi-
tion to private betting com-
panies (the first post-1989
betting company was Prvá
slovenská stávková
spoločnosť Niké, which
began operating in early 1991,
followed by Victory Tip, For-
tuna SK and others) there is a
state-owned lottery and bet-
ting company, Tipos. Betting
on horses is also available as
part of the entertainment at
the Petržalka racetrack in
Bratislava.
“Betting is very popular
in Slovakia,” Roman Berger,
BUSINESS FOCUS
Photo: Reuters
the operating director of
Niké, told The Slovak Spec-
tator. “It has a large group of
enthusiasts especially among
sports fans. For them tipping
results is not only [seen as]
the path to huge wins but
simultaneously adds an ele-
ment of special excitement to
the matches on their tickets.”
Berger sees a difference in
the amount of betting in
Slovakia in comparison with
other countries, saying that
the poorer a country is, the
larger is the number of cit-
izens who are searching for
ways to make some extra
money, opining that in Slov-
akia betting on sporting
events is one of the little
ways in which people can
win money relatively easily
and quickly.
Slovaks like to bet on
football, ice hockey, and ten-
nis matches, Berger said.
Niké and Fortuna SK en-
able bettors to wager on
events other than sports.
These have included parlia-
mentary and presidential
elections, film awards such
as the Oscars and the Czech
Lions, and even TV contests
like last year’s Talentmánia
show.
Because Slovaks show
quite an interest in such bet-
ting opportunities these
kinds of wagers are not ex-
pected to disappear from bet-
ting companies’ offers. But
according to Fortuna SK, bet-
ting companies must apply
for special permission from
the Finance Ministry before
they can offer such bets and
that significantly shortens
the time period during which
this kind of betting can oc-
cur.
“In spite of this, these
events meet with a relatively
sound response among bet-
tors and that is proved by bets
of €1,000 or more,” Marian
Varga, the senior bookmaker
at Fortuna SK, told The Slovak
Spectator. “For example, prior
to the most recent parlia-
mentary election, one bettor
wagered €2,000 with odds of
1.2:1 that the Christian Demo-
cratic Movement (KDH)
would get more votes during
the election than the Slovak
National Party.”
The availability of
gambling opportunities on
the internet has also been
changing the nature of pla-
cing bets.
“This is a more comfort-
able way of betting,” said
Varga, adding that last year
Fortuna SK’s number of cus-
tomers grew by over 25 per-
cent, particularly as a result
of increasing numbers using
the internet to place bets.
Niké has a network of
over 850 betting parlours in
Slovakia but said that inter-
net betting is a phenomenon
that has been advancing at a
robust pace. Berger expects
the number of internet bet-
tors to grow dramatically in
coming years.
Gambling addiction
Ľubomír Okruhlica, head
of the Centre for Treatment
of Drug Dependencies in
Bratislava, said the centre
also deals with gambling ad-
diction and described Slov-
aks’ relationship with games
of chance as “naive".
“Slovaks – compared to
Austria and most of the
western part of the European
Union – are more prone to
become pathological players
due to the extensive exposi-
tion of intensive and little-
regulated advertising by this
industry,” Okruhlica told
The Slovak Spectator.
Okruhlica said that pas-
sions flowing from gaming
stimulate some of the first-
developed centres of the
human brain in a way simil-
ar to adrenaline sports or
drinking alcohol.
A player becomes patho-
logical, according to Okruh-
lica, when he or she loses
personal control and cannot
resist the impulse or the
need to gamble, or is not able
to stop making wagers, or
when a person continues to
gamble even after exceeding
a certain limit that he or she
had established.
He added that because of
this addiction, a pathologic-
al gambler begins to neglect
family, friends and past
hobbies. Okruhlica estim-
ated that there are over
10,000 pathological gam-
blers in Slovakia.
Okruhlica believes that
gaming machines that are
very accessible to the public
are the most dangerous in
cultivating an addiction to
gambling.
“They [gaming machines]
do not require a cultivated
personal appearance as do
most casinos; they do not re-
quire complex intellectual
thinking; and they are located
right in pubs or places where
a lot of people congregate, for
example in bus and railway
stations or close to them,”
Okruhlica said.
January 31 – February 6, 2011
POKER: TV makes
it ubiquitous
Continued from pg 7
Typically there is much
looser legislation govern-
ing skill games than those
of luck, which are often
taxed at a higher rate and
require a specific licence.
The Slovak Parliament
adopted a revision, effect-
ive from April 2010, desig-
nating poker a “game of
risk” in which “the result
depends exclusively or
mostly on chance,” accord-
ing to Stieranková of the
Monte Carlo Poker Club.
Although the designa-
tion might appear to be a
blow to poker purists, who
insist a player’s skill is the
most important factor, the
ruling was broadly wel-
comed by club owners.
“We are glad that a le-
gislative background was
made for poker because
before that, poker was not
ranked anywhere or
defined,” said Jozef
Jankovich, the current
poker manager of Golden
Vegas. Clubs are now re-
quired to acquire a licence
for each poker table in
their premises.
Although the top play-
ers will attempt to minim-
ise the luck factor in poker,
the game’s variance is ac-
tually one of its most ap-
pealing aspects for the be-
ginner, according to
Palovič.
PROJECT: Unclear
fate for Metropolis
Continued from pg 6
Trigranit had said that
the project’s total construc-
tion would take between
three and five years and
that the complex’s
aquapark, a facility that
Bratislava lacks, as well as
the planned congress centre
would be finished within
three years of the launch of
construction.
The proposed site for the
complex is a 30-hectare plot
between Petržalka and
Jarovce, south of Bratislava,
at a junction of highways
linking Hungary, the Czech
Republic and Austria.
In addition to an Amer-
ican-style casino, the plans
for Metropolis include a
shopping centre, the afore-
mentioned aquapark, a re-
creational centre and enter-
tainment venues, as well as
hotels, conference facilities,
galleries, a multi-functional
hall and other attractions.
When introducing the
project in October 2009, An-
drew Tottenham, a manager
from Harrah’s Entertain-
ment company, said that
the Metropolis complex
would increase the number
of tourists visiting Slovakia
8
“It is a huge advantage in
poker, if you compare it with
all other sports. About 20 per-
cent is still luck, and that
keeps everyone playing, be-
cause everyone has the
chance to win the tournament
and the money… But it’s dif-
ferent from roulette and
blackjack too. That's
gambling, because you cannot
influence the result. When
you're playing poker, almost
everything is in your hands.”
The main concern now
among Slovak poker players
and entrepreneurs is consol-
idating the existing market
and not overstretching.
“There are not enough
players for 10 clubs to
survive,” said Jankovich,
who also mentioned that the
economic crisis has necessar-
ily hit poker too. But he added
that the return of the World
Poker Tour is scheduled for
March, and that he expected
at least 200 players to enter
the Slovak National Champi-
onships, also scheduled for
spring, where there will also
be a ladies-only event, de-
signed to encourage women
players to take up poker.
And although Palovič
will continue to sport the
Slovak colours around the
poker tables of the world, he
has also committed himself
to making more frequent ap-
pearances in Bratislava too,
saying his money is as good
as anyone else’s.
from 6 million annually to
11 million and that the
project would also attract
Hungarians and Austrians.
The Bratislava City
Council and municipal offi-
cials in Jarovce reportedly
opposed construction of the
project.
Pavel Škodler, the mayor
of Bratislava’s Jarovce dis-
trict, said the main objec-
tion of his municipal office
is that the project is at odds
with the municipality’s
master plan in areas such as
usage intensity within the
district and the expected
transport burden which the
project, and especially the
casino, would bring.
In October, prior to the
municipal elections, Milan
Ftáčnik, who was later elec-
ted mayor of Bratislava,
voiced a negative opinion
about the project.
“I do not need
Metropolis,” he said, as
quoted by the Hospodárske
Noviny, adding that even
though it would bring posit-
ive things, he did not like its
size. He also said the
developer’s offer to reduce
the size of the casino was
not enough to secure his
support for the project.

FLY: Good sale price is no longer likely
Continued from pg 1
It is pushing for long-term rental
through a concession agreement of 20 to
30 years’ duration, according to a docu-
ment published on the Justice Ministry’s
web portal for regulations on January 27.
The Sme daily had reported on the pre-
ferred method of development a couple of
days earlier, based on a preliminary draft
obtained from the ministry.
The ministry argues that the econom-
ic downturn and the situation in the
European Union and the eurozone would
have a negative impact on the likely rev-
enue from privatisation of the airport.
“It is not possible to expect similarly
advantageous conditions as existed for
the planned privatisation of the airport
back in 2006,” reads the document,
pointing out that privatisation processes
elsewhere in the European Union have
been halted.
Based on the 2006 privatisation plan, 66
percent of airport shares were to have gone
to the TwoOne consortium consisting of
Schwechat Airport in Vienna, the Penta
private equity group and Raiffeisen Zent-
ralbank of Austria. The 2006-2010 Robert
Fico-led government halted the sale.
According to the ministry, granting a
concession or renting the rights to oper-
ate the airport for a defined period would
shift all the risks of running the business
and making future investments onto the
investor. As opposed to sale, the limited
BUSINESS / NEWS
the airport’s entire senior management
in September last year. Figeľ stated that
among the reasons for the wholesale
change at the top was the previous
management’s ambiguous decision-mak-
ing and unexplained preference for cer-
tain financial partners and companies,
according to the SITA newswire.
Bratislava Airport handled close to
1.67 million passengers in 2010, a drop of 3
percent year-on-year, the airport recently
reported in a press release.
Six carriers operated scheduled
flights from the airport to 42 destinations
last year. Ryanair accounted for the
Bratislava Airport Photo: Sme
largest share of the total, with 1.1 million
passengers using its flights to and from
duration of the transaction would mean Bratislava. London topped the list of des-
the government retains greater influ- tinations, with 315,839 passengers.
ence and a degree of control, and Meanwhile, twelve charter carriers flew
moreover would receive a regular in- to 39 destinations, with Travel Service
come. The ministry also stated that there coming first in terms of the number of
are potential partners interested in the holidaymakers, according to TASR.
airport, not only from Europe but also In December, airport spokesperson
from other regions, and said that the pro- Dana Madunická told The Slovak Spectat-
posed form of partnership, a long-term or that it is important to choose the cor-
rental, is appealing. rect kind of partnership, and that there
Based on the draft, a private strategic are several successful models in use
partner could start operating the airport around the world.
as early as the end of 2012 while a tender “The entry of a strategic partner
process could take place in the second would in particular mean for the airport
half of this year. additional financial resources being used
Currently, the Transport Ministry for the development of services and com-
holds 48 percent of the shares in the air- pletion of the necessary infrastructure
port and the National Property Fund holds which we are not able to cover from our
the remainder. The shareholders replaced own resources,” she said.
January 31 – February 6, 2011
IVO: Worries over RTVS
Continued from pg 3
Experts define the criter-
ia and then assign numerical
ratings for each domain (ex-
cept for foreign policy) and
from these calculate an over-
all average.
IVO stated that although
the overall rating for 2010
improved in comparison
with the previous year, it
has still to reach the score
recorded at the start of the
project in 2008.
“Of course it would be
ideal to get the best grade, 1,
in all the areas,” Grigorij
Mesežnikov, the president of
IVO, told the press confer-
ence. “But that would be
idealistic. I can only say that
we started evaluating the
state of political democracy
in Slovakia in 2008 with a
rating of 2.6. That was after
all those inappropriate legis-
lative measures. Today, the
rating is 2.8, so it is still
worse than it was when we
started.”
In the democratic insti-
tutions and the rule of law
category, democracy in the
last quarter was given a
grade of 2.75, a marked im-
provement compared to the
whole-year average of 3.2.
9
in the law, such as the unre-
solved financing of the pub-
lic-service broadcaster, as
well as moving responsibil-
ity for selection of its direct-
or back to parliament,
“which gives rise to worries
about attempts [to impose]
political rule over the pub-
lic-service media”.
According to IVO, the
term of the previous gov-
ernment was rather dam-
aging for the quality of
democracy in Slovakia
since, due to the measures
that the Robert Fico-led gov-
ernment took in the area of
democratic institutions and
the rule of law, legislation,
human and minority rights
and free media, its quality
worsened so much that the
return to the values recor-
ded in 2008 will take much
longer than half a year.
“On top of that, it ap-
pears that the process of do-
ing away with the deforma-
tions and negative con-
sequences of problematic le-
gislative measures keeps
hitting certain obstacles
even after the change of
power,” the IVO Barometer
report reads. “And so we
must state that in some
areas the situation in Slov-

KDH: 'A story with an open end' Problems that remain

Continued from pg 2
Political analyst Grigorij Mesežnikov
said in an interview with The Slovak Spec-
tator that Ďurkovský’s departure had not
come as a surprise to him.
“I didn’t expect any sort of absolute
break-up between him and the KDH,”
Mesežnikov said, pointing out that
Ďurkovský had been a KDH member for
many years, almost since the beginning
of the movement’s existence, and he was
very strongly identified with the political
line of the KDH.
According to Mesežnikov, the con-
troversies around Ďurkovský were un-
pleasant for the movement, and his quit-
ting the party now allows its leaders to
demonstrate they have not closed their
eyes to the allegations affecting him, as
the media and opposition had been
claiming.
“Certainly he did not do [leave] delib-
erately, he surely did so under pressure
from the KDH too, so they can present this
in this area include the
tense relations between
akia is worse now than be-
fore the advent of the ruling
coalition of Smer, SNS and
the executive and the Su- HZDS, despite the ambitions
as a consequence,” Mesežnikov told The sponsibility, but rather saying “one ‘our preme Court, as well as the of the new ruling parties to
Slovak Spectator, adding that the present father’ for a mortal sin”, the SITA news- failure to strip MPs and straighten those
situation is acceptable for both sides, wire reported. judges of their immunity deformations.”
since KDH can say they didn’t sweep the Fico also accused Figeľ, the KDH lead- from prosecution, IVO re- Smer, now the main op-
problem under the carpet, while er, of lying, since “he must have known ported. The failed vote on position party, reacted by
Ďurkovský can claim he now has some from the beginning what was happening the next general prosecutor saying that IVO had long
space to clear his name and will return. in BVS”, referring to alleged links was also politically signi- supported the current
“It is still a story with an open end,” between Figeľ and the management and ficant, it noted. centre-right government. It
Mesežnikov said. board members of BVS. Further improvement had never tried to hide this,
“I don’t see it as a solution; it is mo- The scandal around BVS involves re- was recorded in the areas of party spokesperson Silvia
mentarily a reaction to the situation that cent media reports about a highly unusu- legislation and minority Glendová said.
arose,” PM Iveta Radičová told the Sme al series of transactions that have been rights, which scored 2.5 What matters for the
daily in her response to Ďurkovský’s de- portrayed as privatisation of a key part of and 2.75 respectively, as ranking, according to
parture. She said she considered him an the water utility. The deal was orches- opposed to the 3.0 grades Mesežnikov, is the stability
independent MP who would support the trated by Ďurkovský and concluded just both received in the previ- in the operation of constitu-
ruling coalition in parliamentary votes, one day before last year’s municipal elec- ous quarter. tional institutions, relations
as he has promised. tions. The official buyer is the firm HASS Media freedom was the between those institutions,
“I believe it doesn’t change much for from Zlaté Moravce, which drew a loan only area where how power is handled, the
the coalition as such,” Mesežnikov agreed, arranged for the purchase from Privat- democracy’s grade did not relations among political
adding that the cohesion of the ruling co- banka, owned by the well-connected fin- pass 3.0 this quarter. actors, how legislation is
alition cannot be cracked by just this. ancial group Penta. The survey’s authors prepared, how human and
The opposition was, however, less The owner of HASS, Eduard Huňady, is point to the extremely short minority rights are observed,
than satisfied with Ďurkovský’s reaction. a long-time friend of BVS director-general time which it took to pass the freedom of the media,
Smer leader Robert Fico said Ďurkovský’s Daniel Gemeran, who was appointed by the law to create RTVS and and whether pressure is ap-
departure does not mean he is taking re- Ďurkovský, the SITA newswire reported. said there are several risks plied to the media.

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C 3634 C 3573
10 January 31 – February 6, 2011
The organ makers of Rajec
HISTORY TALKS
THE SMALL town of Rajec lies close to Žilina
in northern Slovakia. Its oldest and most
valued attraction is the Roman Catholic
church dedicated to St Ladislaus. The ori-
ginal Gothic building is first mentioned in
1368 and one of the church’s walls has a
sundial dating from 1770 with the Latin in-
scription: “If it were not for the Sun, a clock
would not show digits.”
Rajec was also famed for its craftsmen,
its most renowned artisans probably being
the Pažický family of organ makers. The
founder of the organ-making tradition, On-
drej Pažický, built his first big organ in St
Ladislaus’ and he was followed by three gen-
erations who constructed 200 organs of dif-
ferent sizes.
Other successful Rajec craftsmen were
wood carvers, usually referred to by the Lat-
in term “sculptor” in historical documents.
The intricate work of these carvers was well
used by other craftsmen such as the Pažický
family. The most beautiful works by the Ra- Slovak Bethlehem in Rajecká Lesná was
jec carvers that are preserved to this day in- carved by Rajec master-carver Juraj Pekara.
clude splendid carved double-winged doors
made by the Igonda brothers.
Carvers are still hard at work in Rajec
today. It is no coincidence that the famous
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CULTURE
Western SLOVAKIA
Bratislava
l CLASSICAL MUSIC: Organ
Concert – Organ player Csaba
Király from Hungary, winner
of several international com-
petitions (both as a pianist and
organist) performs works by
Franz Liszt including Ave
Maria, Consolation Des Major,
Zur Trauung, Hosannah,
Totentanz (Dance of the Dead),
and others.
Starts: February 6, 10:30;
Big Concert Studio of Slovak
Radio, Mýtna 1. Admission: €1.
Tel: 02/5727-3856; www.
slovakradio.sk.
Bratislava
EXHIBITION: Ekoglass Festival
2010 – Artists from Poland, the
Czech Republic and Slovakia
showcase the results of their
work, made out of glass waste
during the International Field
Workshop in Szklarska Poreba
(PL) and Desná (CR).
Open: Mon-Thu 10:00-
17:00, Fri 9:00-15:00 until Feb-
ruary 11; Polish Institute, SNP
Square 27. Admission: free. Tel:
02/5443-2014; www. polinst.sk.
Bratislava
l EXHIBITION: Planet Magnet
This postcard shows the church of St - Petr Bařinka – The avant-
Ladislaus in 1939. garde works of this young
Czech artist combine all
By Branislav Chovan genres of modern art, includ-
ing comics, advertising
posters and animated car-
toons.
Open: Wed-Fri 15:00-19:00
until February 7; Fru Fru Gal-
lery, Štefánikova 13. Admis-
sion: free. Tel: 0907/706-081;
www.frufrugallery.sk.
Bratislava
l EXHIBITION: Bienále di-
vadelnej fotografie 2010 / The
Biennale of Theatre Photo-
graphy represents the cul-
mination of the initial year of
this competition and the
creme de la creme of contest-
ants’ works.
Open: Evenings until Feb-
ruary 8; foyer of the new SND
building, Pribinova 17. More
info: www.snd.sk.
Nitra
l BALLROOM DANCE: Ples
saleziánov spolupracovníkov /
011, 7pm
March 5th, 2
The Ball of Salesian Work-
mates marks the culmination
ding of SND
The new buil
Organizátori: Slovenské národné
divadlo v spolupráci s organizátorom
Krištáľového krídla
Krištáľové
krídlo
IN THE “culture nod” Stanica Žilina-Záriečie, US band Kayo Dot,
the Tartar Lamb (grouping consisting of two members of Kayo
Dot) and Jeremiah Cymerman (US) will play on January 31 at
Tickets available at: 20:00 for fans of avant-garde, progressive rock or experimental
SND Box offices and www.ticketportal.sk music characterised by rich instrumentation and longer-than-
usual tunes. Tickets – priced €2.50-€4 – can be bought at the
HOTLINE: +421 2 204 72 297 venue. For more information, please visit www.stanica.sk.
N A M E D A Y
Monday Tuesday
Emil Tatiana
January 31 February 1
A Slovak’s name day (meniny) is as important as his or her birthday. It is traditional to present friends or co-workers with a small gift,
such as chocolates or flowers, and to wish them Všetko najlepšie k meninám (Happy name day)
EVENTS COUNTRYWIDE
IN THE new building of the Slovak National Theatre in Bratis-
lava, world-famous Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez will
give a concert on February 3 at 19:30. The “King of Bel Canto”,
as he is dubbed, will sing selected arias by Cimarosa, Rossini,
Donizetti, Verdi, Gounod, Massenet and Boieldieu in what
might be one of the highlights of this season at the SND. Tick-
ets cost between €115 and €250 and can be bought either
through www.ticketportal.sk, or at the SND’s ticket offices
(www.snd.sk). Photo: Courtesy of SND
of cooperation between the by modern Slovak artists that
Nitra branch of Matica can be purchased. Includes all
Slovenská, a national cultural genres and all kinds of art-
institution, and Salesian vo- works, from glass to tapestry,
lunteers and activists. graphic art to clothing.
Starts: February 5, Dom Open: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00
Matice slovenskej, Dolno- until February 5; Liptovská
čermánska 737. Tel: 037/6566- galéria P.M. Bohúňa, Tranov-
228; www.kamdomesta.sk. ského 3. Admission: €0.50-€1.
Tel: 044/5522-758; www.
Trnava galerialm.sk.
l EXHIBITION: Spomienky na
budúcnosť / Memories ofthe Žilina
Future – As part of a project l EXHIBITION: Biely sex /
bringing young artists to pub- White Sex - Nina Šošková –
lic attention, the works of This exhibition by a young
Trnava native Ivan Dudáš, fo- Slovak sculptor integrates the
cusing on video art and digital statues and items with space,
images, are being shown in among others in the form of
the klUb 3 venue of the Ján in-sits.
Koniarek Gallery. Open: Tue-Sat 9:00-12:00,
Open: Tue-Fri 9:00-17:00, 12:40-17:00, Sun 10:00-12:00,
Sat-Sun 13:00-18:00 until Feb- 12:40-16:00 until February 13;
ruary 4; GJK, Zelený kríček 3. Považská galéria umenia, M.R.
Admission: €0.60-€1.30. Tel: Štefánika 2. Admission:
033/5511-659; www.gjk.sk. €0.50-€1. Tel: 041/5622-522;
www.pgu.sk.
Central SLOVAKIA
Eastern SLOVAKIA
Liptovský Mikuláš
l EXHIBITION: Predajná Košice
výstava / The Marketable Ex- l OPERA: Pietro Mascagni -
hibition – A collection of works Silvano – The closing night of
this lesser-known opera will
be performed in Italian, with
Slovak subtitles. It is directed
by Andrea Hlinková and con-
ducted by Marián Vach.
Starts: February 3, 18:30;
Štátne divadlo, Hlavná 58.
Admission: €3-€5. Tel: 055/
2452-269; www.sdke.sk.
Poprad
l EXHIBITION: Rekapitulácia
/ Recapitulation - Ivan
Šafranko – This summary re-
view of the life’s work of one of
the most interesting eastern-
Slovak artists of the second
half of the 20th century is on
show in the region where he
created and taught.
Open: Tue-Sat 10:00-17:00,
Sun 13:00-17:00 until April 10;
Tatranská galéria, Hviez-
doslavova 12. Admission:
€0.50-€1.50. Tel: 052/7721-968;
www.tatragaleria.sk.
Photo: Courtesy of Kayo Dot By Zuzana Vilikovská
J A N U A R Y - F E B R U A R Y 2 0 1 1
Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday
Erik BlaÏej Veronika Agáta Dorota
Erika
February 2 February 3 February 4 February 5 February 6
 CULTURE
Sashar Zarif's performance explored perceptions about migrants and his own life experience. Photo: Courtesy of Shiraz and S. Zarif
January 31 – February 6, 2011
US-Slovak family’s art
exhibited in Bratislava
THE RESIDENCE of the US
ambassador to Slovakia,
Theodore Sedgwick, is cur-
rently housing an exhibition
showing both the artistic
and human genesis of the
Rudavský family. Zuzana
and Ondrej, children of the
artistic couple, have both
Slovak and US citizenship,
since they left what was then
Czechoslovakia in 1986. Zuz-
ana, a versatile creator, has
returned to Slovakia after 16
years of living and working
in New York while Ondrej,
who specialises in video-art,
11
ary one but will remain at
the ambassador’s residence
until spring; some pieces
may remain even longer.
Members of the embassy
thought the exhibition
would be interesting because
of the importance and di-
versity of the entire family’s
body of work.
The Rudavskýs represen-
ted Slovakia at the 1997
Venice Biennale and Andrej
Rudavský’s sculpture depict-
ing Saints Cyril and Metho-
dius stands at the United Na-
tions headquarters in New

Dance as a route film, and digital art, has

stayed in Los Angeles, the
TASR newswire wrote.
Their father Andrej, a
renowned Slovak sculptor,
York as a gift from Slovakia.
Zuzana and Ondrej’s dual cit-
izenship means that the
work of this one family rep-
resents a joint exhibition of

to self-discovery has remained strongly con-

Canadian dances
Sufi rituals
in Bratislava
BY ZUZANA VILIKOVSKÁ
Spectator staff
SHAMAN, Conference of the
Birds, and Tryst were among
the gifts that a Canadian dan-
cer, choreographer and ethno-
grapher of Azeri-Persian an-
cestry brought to Bratislava at
the end of last year.
Sashar Zarif, who believes
in telling stories through
dance, did much more than
just dance while in Bratislava:
he participated in a discussion
organised by the People in Per-
il organisation and the Shiraz
web-portal, held a workshop
for students from a dance con-
servatory, and marked Inter-
national Migrants Day by per-
forming his dances at the Met-
eorit Theatre, co-organised by
EtnoDance and the Šimečka
Foundation. Zarif focused on
the lives of migrants through
his own life experience.
Zarif is the artistic director
of the Sashar Zarif Dance
Theatre in Toronto and is also
involved with Joshgoon – the
Canadian Academy of
Azerbaijani Dance, Dancers for
Peace and the Centre for Dance
Studies. The Slovak Spectator
spoke with Zarif about his life,
his beliefs, and about what
dancing means to him.
The Slovak Spectator (TSS):
During your performances
you managed to make people
think about how they might
feel if they were migrants, or
as many still call them
“strangers”. Have you
drawn from your own per-
sonal history? Could you
share some details?
Sashar Zarif (SZ): I was
born in Tehran to an
Azerbaijani family and I first
went to Azerbaijan, where my
grandmother was raised and
which she used to talk about,
Esther Chabot and Sashar Zarif perform. Photo: Andrea Kosarová
as an adult. I left Iran as a teen-
ager and I lived first in India,
then I returned to Iran and
then I went to Turkey where I
stayed for three and a half
years, and then I went to
Toronto. That city enchanted
me since Toronto is very di-
verse and allows you to feel at
home from the very first mo-
ment. I went to high school
there but I did not speak Eng-
lish very well at that time.
I will never forget those
feelings as a young boy, a
teenager, walking down the
halls of the high school in a
distant land, not even speak-
ing the language very well but
feeling really at home. It was a
place where I was able to re-
late to different cultures: be-
cause my neighbour is from
one place, my friend is from
somewhere else, and then my
boss is from yet another place.
I did a lot of dancing at that
time. The culture of body lan-
guage is very important and
when you really understand
it, a lot of conflicts will disap-
pear. I think sometimes
words are problems in conflict
situations.
Every time people start ar-
guing or debating it’s so hard
to understand each other – be-
cause the sensation comes out
filtered through your mind in a
different way – but dance is so
close to the body, and so true
and so sensual.
TSS: Have you been to Slov-
akia before? How did the Slov-
ak audience respond to you?
SZ: Two years ago I came
here for a brief visit. The recent
audience was very open, re-
sponsive, and as I did the work-
shop at the dance school, I was
amazed how open the students
there were. I find the Slovak
mentality close to where I come
from: there is some fire in our
mentality to which you seem to
respond. I also enjoyed my dis-
cussion with Andrej Bán [head
of the People in Peril humanit-
arian civic association, journal-
ist and photographer - Ed.], who
has much positive energy and
interesting ideas; he is humble
but well-informed.
TSS: Did you have any ambi-
tion to tell a sort of personal
story?
SZ: It definitely was story-
telling. I was telling my story
and I wanted also to acknow-
ledge the background I come
from. I can turn very modern, I
can change myself and my re-
ligion even though I hate to
involve religion in any politic-
al issues; but I can never
change myself, my roots, how
I grew up, my embedded cul-
ture. I realised that instead of
nected to the Slovak coun-
tryside. Their mother Mária
has exhibited in every
corner of the world, with her
Slovak and American art.
Ambassador Sedgwick
said at the opening of the ex-
hibition, which was accom-
panied by Ivan Šíller on pi-
just living in the West and feel- work merging the “folk- ano, that the artworks have a
ing embarrassed about it, I can Slovak” and the internation- historic, social and political
embrace all the positive sides al dimension in a unique es- resonance. They reflect a
of my origin, my background sence. The curator of the deeply Slovak perception as
and my life experiences even if Slovak National Gallery, well as the universal lan-
the whole world is looking Katarína Bajcurová, guage of art and beauty. Un-
only at the negative sides. So, I summed up the element that fortunately, the exhibition is
wanted to embrace that and I connects all four members of not open to the public.
wanted to also make a confes- the family as “the con-
sion with my work. sciousness of tradition”. By Zuzana Vilikovská,
The exhibit is a tempor- with press reports
TSS: What did you showcase in
your performance?
SZ: The first part was a de-
votional dance. I was trying to
showcase the techniques that I
learned in performances that
exist in Sufi ritual practices.
[Sufism is the inner, mystical
dimension of Islam, character-
ised by practices of repeating
the names of God, whirling and
asceticism - Ed.]. I don’t mean
the clichés that you read in
books, or tourist attractions,
but the real Sufi treasures that
you can find in remote places.
The Shamanic practices are a
very profound performance
structure embedded into the
rituals: performing arts or ex-
pressive arts. I use it not neces-
sarily to communicate with the
audience but rather to commu-
nicate with myself and to self-
discover; to go to different
stages of embodiment and prac-
tise their roots as a human being
because we are neither good nor
bad; we have everything in us, US Ambassador Theodore Sedgwick with Zuzana and Mária
and this is encouragement for Rudavská. Photo: Courtesy of the US Embassy
us to look into that.
TSS: Where did you learn the
techniques and traditions?
SZ: I’ve been very much in-
volved with Sufi poetry: Hafiz,
Omar Khayyám, Rumi. In fact,
as a child, I would read Hafiz
and I wouldn’t understand
much but I would be fascinated
by his work. I am not a Sufi, by
no means. I am a dancer inter-
ested in Sufism – I started my
fieldwork in different coun-
tries, from western Mongolia all
across the steppes of Central
Asia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,
Chechnya and then Morocco
(African Sufis), and I went
there, lived with them, re-
searched, and that’s my spe-
cialty, the dance and music Ondrej Rudavský: Space Transformation.
which show in Sufism. Photo: O. Rudavský
12 January 31 – February 6, 2011
Marathon bowlers
set new record
ON SAT-
1
URDAY
December 16
at exactly
17:05 bowlers
at the House of
Sport in Galanta started their
attempt to set a world record
and become the biggest bowl-
ing tournament ever held.
The fifth year of this popu-
lar marathon – which has
already acquired an interna-
tional reputation – brought a
first Slovak record in 2006: a
24-hour bowling marathon
involving 104 players. A year
later, 124 players participated
in 24 hours of bowling and in
2008 the event went on for
more than 37 hours with as
many as 164 bowlers. In 2009,
184 bowlers in Galanta logged
42 hours.
The Slovan Galanta bowl-
ing club asked the London
headquarters of the Guinness
Book of Records to inscribe
their marathons in the world
record book but the hurdle
they had to leap was at least
252 people taking part in a
bowling marathon.
Jozef Butko, the main or-
ganiser, had no fears about
reaching the required level of
participation and the bowling
club had to literally stop fur-
ther enrolment after the
queue of enthusiastic bowlers
came close to 370.
The bowling hall was
The strain of breaking records begins to show...
AROUND SLOVAKIA compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
packed for the record-setting
attempt and the honour of
bowling first was given to
four participants from
Galanta – František Pilcz, one
of the oldest bowlers, along
with Ernest Rácz and Tomáš
and Martin Mrva. A team
from the Hungarian town of
Bábolny followed and it in-
cluded the first female parti-
cipant, Violetta Szuntein.
Bowlers from the Czech
Republic were also on the
starting list and three teams
of visually-impaired athletes
from Šaľa and Trnava took
part. The last team to com-
plete was TJ Družba Piešťany,
made up of Jaroslav Kozák,
Peter Gocký, Michal Schmidl
and Štefan Kočan, who also
serves as the president of the
Slovak Bowling Association.
The record-setting mara-
thon ended shortly after 20:00
on Sunday, December 19. It
had lasted for 75 hours, 1
minute and 42 seconds, and it
had a record number of bowl-
ers: 324.
The best single bowler
during the marathon was
Ľubomír Bugár of the Inter
Bratislava club with a score of
611 points, and his team was
also named the best of the
event.
Jozef Butko accepted the
certificate for the new record.
More information is available
at slovenskerekordy.sk.
Photo: SITA
FEATURE
The Slovak polar explorers had to contend with deep snow and frigid temperatures.
Slovaks reach the South Pole
AFTER marching 200 kilo-
metres on skis through the
Antarctic environment, four
Slovak polar explorers
reached the South Pole in
early December. Peter
Valušiak, Róbert Kukučka,
Patrik Tkáč and Pavol Barabáš
had to contend with – among
other things – temperatures
around minus 40°C that are
typical for the beginning of
Arctic summer, said Hana
Vítková of the K2 Studio to the
TASR newswire. She added
that the explorers’ travel was
made more difficult by huge
snowdrifts and the high alti-
tude – 3,300 metres above sea
level.
The men were the first
Slovak expedition to the
South Pole in 2010. They flew
to the Novolazarevskaya polar
base in early November and
acclimatised themselves with
ascents in Queen Maud Land,
characterised for its sharp
Košice art faculty unveils novel ideas
THE FACULTY
2
of Art of the
Technical Uni-
versity of
Košice (TUKE)
has come up
with the idea of building a pa-
vilion for cultural events en-
tirely from PET bottles that
can be disassembled and
moved when needed, making
it unique.
“It will be a sort of a
puzzle, able to be put together
in any space or form. We will
be able to adapt it to the local
space and to transport it any-
where where an event, cul-
tural performance, lecture or
exhibition will take place,”
Zuzana Grošaftová, one of the
designers, told the Korzár
daily. The university faculty
started collecting PET bottles
in December.
rock formations which pierce
the Antarctic ice sheets.
“We managed to travel to
the Antarctic thanks to good
contacts with Russian polar
explorers that were estab-
lished two years ago during
my solo attempt at a Trans-
Antarctic crossing,” said ex-
pedition leader Valušiak. He
added that even though the
sun really never vanishes
from the horizon at this time
of year in Antarctica, the
group had to adapt to the very
low temperatures.
“Each of us had reached
the very end of his tether. The
snow literally sucked the
strength out of us. The heavy
sleighs made travel through
the snowdrifts difficult. One
could not just change a
sweaty t-shirt for a dry one, as
it would have frozen. We had
to dry our t-shirts while wear-
ing them during sleep,” said
Patrik Tkáč, a financier and
TUKE’s Faculty of Art also
offered a workshop on
December 17 focused on water
– in its solid state as ice and as
a liquid imprisoned in a man-
made product, a PET bottle.
Artists displayed how they
had transformed ordinary
plastic bottles into utility
artworks and sculptors from
Slovakia, Hungary and Poland
transformed blocks of ice into
amazing shapes reflecting the
world of nature.
The workshop was organ-
ised by the Košice 2013 non-
profit organisation together
with students from the Fac-
ulty of Arts and invited
sculptors. Sculptors particip-
ating included Robert Burkat,
Michal Mizula and Zsolt M.
Tóth. More information is
available at www.iceteam.pl
or www.iceheart.hu.
Photo: TASR
marathon runner.
The Slovak polar group
came together during a ski
crossing to the North Pole in
2008 using the route called
the Messner variation. “I
thought this march would be
easier when compared to the
Arctic where frost was com-
bined with 100-percent hu-
midity, but in the last part,
close to the South Pole, the
altitude complicated the con-
ditions, and this combination
shook us all,” Kukučka stated.
The expedition had the
opportunity to witness a huge
colony of Emperor Penguins.
“There were thousands of
them; they were absolutely
not afraid. Males guarded
their offspring that were
three months old while fe-
males roamed dozens of kilo-
metres towards the sea to
search for food,” said Barabáš,
who was the cameraman for
the expedition.
Sculptors from three countries created works of art.
Saving
planet
Earth
AN ENVIR-
3
ONMENTAL
exhibition
currently
installed in
the foyer of
Apollo Business Centre I in
Bratislava has the goal of
reminding individuals
that they can personally
contribute to a more sus-
tainable and pleasant life
on planet Earth and that
the future of our ecosys-
tem is not only the re-
sponsibility of politicians
and environmental activ-
ists.
The travelling exhibi-
tion called How to Change
the World highlights the
idea that many small indi-
vidual steps can have a big
impact on the world’s en-
vironment.
The exhibition was
created by graphic design-
er Róbert Szabó and photo-
grapher Viktor Szemzö and
urges people to think
about what can be done in
everyone’s everyday life
without much effort and
time, while noting that too
few people think about the
negative effects that their
everyday actions can have
on the environment.
“The exhibition is a
project of four countries
and the posters, with
translated texts, will also
travel to Austria, Hungary
and Slovenia,” Zuzana
Jezerská from the Slovak
Centre for Communication
and Development told the
TASR newswire.
Photo: TASR