• gives persons and public institutions the right to get rebuttals published to anything, and that at the place and in the size of the article rebutted;
  
• there is no requirement to prove in court that the original report was false or misleading or libelous, it's enough if the rebutters themselves deem it so;
  
• the media are forbidden from reacting to the 'rebuttals';
  
• the media keep responsiblity for the 'rebuttals', too -- e.g. if they violate laws and ethics!

After some minor changes (they dropped the element on fines), the government majority adopted the media law on 9 April. The boycott of the Lisbon Treaty vote, which required a three-fifths majority to pass, worked the same day, but SMK/MKP changed sides in the repeat vote the next day.

One day later, the newspapers again appeared with empty front pages. A week later, they got a supporting action from the main Czech dailies.

In the EP, the Socialists, who earlier this year restored the membership of PM Robert Fico's Smer party that was discontinued for coalitioning with a far-right partner, decided to do nothing for the time being. The EPP however saw the complaints of their Slovakian members as good occasion to blast the Socialists.

At home, far-right leader Ján Slota (Le Pen's personal friend in Slovakia) "thanked" MKP by calling its leader "a guy with balls" (he earlier called him "a heap of cow dung"). While the MKP's former coalition partners and fellow opposition parties (SDKÚ and KDH, the liberal resp. conservative Christian Democrats) were furious.

The leaders of SDKÚ and KDH publicly claimed, Slovakian papers widely reported (but the alleged participants denied) that the government won the MKP over with a backroom deal: a promise to leave the status quo and not limit education in minority languages in the upcoming education law.

A week after the Lisbon Treaty vote, the claim of another backroom deal surfaced: that Fico "bought" the MKP with public money to save a publisher which had connections to MKP's current chairman Pál Csáky. The former minister ousted prior longtime chairman and former Speaker of Parliament Béla Bugár a year ago, which was a victory of the nationalist wing over the moderate wing. But the internal conflict continued, and Bugár is said to be the "leaker".

What followed was a string of public accusations and motions to remove/expel people of the other camp. The government used the turmoil to renege on the first alleged deal, and put back restrictions on minority language education into the draft education law.

:: :: :: :: ::

I note that with both of the other two opposition parties in parliament also had internal conflict earlier this year, and that the government didn't commit big mistakes affecting the common people so far, and survived the tossing out of a corrupt agriculture minister from former left-populist (and criminal) PM Mečiar's party, Fico and his Smer party are even more popular than when elected.

Some further reading: The Lisbon Treaty, in hindsight in the e-zine The Slovak Spectator.