Vladislav Janiš

“I was at a vocational technical school with Piško and Skrúcaný in Kysucké Nové Mesto. That happened in '96, too. Well, everything was fine, it was a debate, there were many students, and someone asked them who they were going to vote for. So they said, they explained who they definitely wouldn’t vote for, and so on. Of course, there were professors and all kinds of people, 90% of the people were positively for Mečiar. It wasn’t even evening when they called me in response to the lecture, where these people clarified who they would vote for, they called me saying they wanted to remove the director. It was unpleasant to me because the headmaster had just been after a heart attack. In the end it was somehow hushed up and the headmaster stayed in the position, but we were forbidden to enter all high schools and universities for some time.”

“Then there was another problem, the fact that I wasn’t a party follower, I wasn’t in the Communist Party. So a political official came, otherwise a very decent, sophisticated man, and he said to me: 'You know what, Vlado, it would be good if you joined the party.' It was kind of against my conscience due to my background at home, but he said to me: 'You’ll be there and you’ll be fine.' So I somehow consented to this devil's sign and went to Prague, where I was checked up on by the political department whether I was a capable Communist."