Ljubljana - The National Assembly appointed on Monday new members of public broadcaster RTV Slovenija's programming council and supervisory board after the opposition walked out of the session in protest against what they said was a line-up that does not satisfy the legal requirement that the balance of power in parliament be considered.

The five programming council members appointed by law at the proposal of political parties - Dejan Cesar, Anuša Gaši, Vane Gošnik, Jože Jerovšek and Maja Laposnik - were put forward by three coalition parties and two notionally opposition parties whose MPs tend to vote with the government, the SNS and DeSUS.

The same five parties nominated five supervisory board members: Tamara Besednjak Valič, Janez Čadež, Metka Čobec, Romana Fišer and Alenka Vodončnik.

The National Assembly also endorsed eight programming council members proposed by RTV Slovenija viewers and listeners.

This was the second attempt at the appointments after Speaker Igor Zorčič refused to hold a vote at the previous session, in what the coalition said was an unprecedented breach of the parliamentary rules of procedure.

The reasons he cited for refusing to put the appointments to the vote were the same as invoked by the opposition today: that the selection was not in conformity with the act on RTV Slovenija, which stipulates that the selection must reflect to the maximum extent possible the composition of the parliament as a whole.

The coalition rejected this notion as it pointed out that the situation was similar under past centre-left governments, when the opposition was not represented despite this statutory requirement.