The parliament amended three laws to enable Janez Jansa, the PM-designate, to form a government cabinet to his liking. The new cabinet will have one ministry more, a total of 15, plus no more than two ministers without portfolio.
Changes to the acts on government, public administration and lawmakers were endorsed by MPs of the likely new coalition (SDS, NSi, SLS and DeSUS) as well as the SNS lawmakers, while the LDS and the ZLSD voted against.
According to the amendments to the acts on government and public administration, the Ministry of Information Society will be eliminated. The tasks related to telecommunications and post will be transferred to the Economics Ministry, while the fields of access to public information and e-government will be in the domain of the new Ministry of Public Administration.
The new public administration portfolio will thus be in charge of the public administration sector that has so far been under the umbrella of the Interior Ministry; the Interior Ministry will only be left with the fields of public safety, police, administrative affairs and migration.
The Ministry of Public Administration, which promises to become one of the biggest departments, will also take in the Government Centre for Informatics, the Personnel Department and the Joint Services of the Government, a governmental body in charge of the government's various investment activities.
The Ministry of Education, Science and Sport will also be thoroughly overhauled. It will be split up into a Ministry of Education and Sport and a separate Ministry of Higher Education, Science and Technology.
Since the new cabinet will only be allowed to have one state secretary per minister according to the legislation enforced by the outgoing government, amendments were passed that give the PM the power to name an unlimited number of cabinet state secretaries to help the prime minister.
At the same time, ministerial councillors introduced by the outgoing government, who had similar assignments and were also named at the proposal of the prime ministers, will no longer be appointed.
The changes did not provoke a lot of protest, although LDS lawmaker Pavel Gantar, the outgoing minister of information society, said the ministry's elimination is controversial as several areas remain "in the air" and have not been assigned to other departments.
The LDS also said that the act on government should specifically mention that there will be a department for European affairs, which currently has the status of a government office and is headed by a minister without portfolio.
The parliament further amended the act on lawmakers, allowing MPs who are named state secretaries to suspend their mandate; so far, this right applied only to those who had been named ministers.
This solution provoked widespread protest by the LDS and the ZLSD, which argued that the amendments introduce new and unfounded privileges. According to Milan Potrc, the head of the ZLSD deputy group, the new system also allows the prime minister - at least in theory - to name all coalition MPs state secretaries and bring in replacement MPs.
More articles from this issue:
Archive
|