A government of experts, early elections and limited invitations… Čaputová also left out Remišová: The reason is clear, says the political scientist – Domáce – Správy

President Zuzana Čaputová gradually called political leaders to the palace to discuss nominations and possible support for the caretaker government. So far, the only party that declared its support even before the meeting with the president is Saxony. Several leaders criticized the fact that the head of state did not discuss the nominations with them in advance.

VIDEO After meeting with President Čaputová, Heger denied that the new government cabinet would be right-wing

The new government does not have certain support

The new government will certainly not receive support from Hlas and probably not even from Smer leader Robert Fico and his party’s deputies. Čaputová decided to leave Fico out of the negotiations. This happened after the president announced that she would use all legal means to protect herself and her children.

Read more Čaputová negotiated a new government. Other names in Odor’s cabinet are known

The reason was the constant attacks on her person by the head of Smer. The president did not even invite the chairperson for Za ljudí Veronika Remišová or representatives of the extremist ĽS NS and its offshoot, the Republika movement. The strongest opposition party Smer conditions the support of the new cabinet by changing the date of early elections to the first or second weekend of July. There is still no support in the parliament for changing the date, even though the head of the parliament Boris Kollár (We are a family) called an extraordinary meeting for Thursday morning.

According to the head of the elections department, Eva Chmelová, it would be difficult to meet an earlier deadline and the elections do not deserve such devastation of the law. Kollar emphasized that the earlier date of the elections is just a game to mislead the voters. “Early elections cannot be earlier. It clearly said OĽaNO, Saxony, that they will not vote and votes for a constitutional majority cannot be created,” he declared.

The office of the president said on Tuesday that not all the names of new ministers that have been publicized are among her nominations. According to information from Pravda daily, Július Barczi ultimately rejected the offer to become the Minister of Culture.

According to the new minister, Diary of N Silvia Hroncová should have been the ex-director of the SND. The former director of Orange, Pavol Lančarič, should lead the Ministry of Transport. Veronika Remišová will probably be replaced by Peter Balík, who headed the innovation section in her department. For now, the search is still on for a person to fill the chair at the Ministry of Education and the Environment.

Some are excited, some are not

The Speaker of the Parliament Boris Kollár (We are a family) was the first to arrive at the presidential palace on Wednesday. The composition of the official government surprised him. After the meeting, he said that the government of experts will lead Slovakia to early elections “completely well”. “I think it’s very well laid out. It’s not as progressive as we feared it would be. It is a government of experts,” Kollár said after the meeting.

He has not yet said whether he will express confidence in the government. “We have to wait for the program statement of the government,” he said. “We will certainly not be against them just because of what the personal nominations are,” he said. According to the speaker of the parliament, it is balanced and among the members are both conservative and liberal nominees. Not a single name surprised him negatively.

Second in line was the still temporarily appointed Prime Minister Eduard Heger (Democrats). He refused to say whether the list of new ministers disappointed him. “There were some names I didn’t quite expect, but okay,” he responded.

Read more Fico is lying. He called Čaputová an American agent last year, but now she denies it

The opposition criticized that the so far unofficial list of new ministers mostly consists of representatives of right-wing politics, but Heger does not see it that way. “We were looking for expertise,” he emphasized, adding that the nominees were chosen by the president and her team, and he does not think that they should be chosen by the new head of the caretaker government, Ľudovít Ódor.

According to him, it will be very important what program statement the new professional cabinet comes up with. The support of the Democrats also depends on it. “It remains to be seen what the minister himself will bring and how the government will come to an agreement and what they will do. We will wait for the government’s program statement and then we will see whether we will support the government,” he explained. “What is important for us is the continuity of things that our government has developed, which are beneficial for Slovakia,” Heger said, adding that ideological disputes should not arise between experts.

The leader of Saxony, Richard Sulík, repeated that he is satisfied with the nomination of Ódor, because it is the only confirmed name. “The president introduced me to all the names, but pointed out that the list is preliminary and may change,” he declared. However, according to him, these are “solid nominations”. He will comment on the names of the new cabinet only when it is official.

Read more Fico will not apologize to the president. He claims to only use hard facts. Pellegrini defends Čaputova

According to Sulík, it is not easy to find a suitable candidate for the position of Minister of Education in the small Slovakia of 5 million people. “People think it’s a lick of honey, but first of all, if you don’t go there to sew and steal, it’s bullshit,” he explained. He admitted that if the president takes his comments into account, then the Saxony club will express confidence in the new government.

OĽaNO leader Igor Matovič said that he too will wait for the government’s program statement to support. He explained that the post of Deputy Prime Minister of the Slovak Republic for Legislation, which is currently held by Štefan Holý (We are a family), will be missing in the new cabinet.

“We know some of the names of the new government, some we don’t. I personally would not nominate a few people to the government that I would form. Such an ordinary government,” he clarified. However, he only communicated his reservations with Čaputová. “Mrs. President did not push the first button well. If she wanted to ensure that there was no chaos and there was stability, then she would try to form a government in such a way that she could have express confidence in the parliament. She took it the other way around,” he added.

Not a single name bothered Pellegrini

Matovič does not like the fact that the president presented an already finished list to the parliamentary parties. She thinks that she was inspired by such a monarchist style of government at the coronation of King Charles III. He is convinced that she should have negotiated with the political parties first.

According to him, there is one interesting thing about the president’s lineup. “The prime minister will be the person who invented the punishment for any government and thus the budget is balanced. We should have a balanced budget for next year. Who else knows how to put it together better than the person who is the author of this idea,” Matovič pointed his finger at Ódor and his right-hand man from the NBS, Michal Horváth, who is to be the Minister of Finance.

With a smile, he added that he was curious “how the analysts who invented it will be able to implement it.” According to Matovič, Slovakia should also prepare for “the scenario that it is not possible to form a new government after the elections and Ódor will be prime minister in two years.”

Even the chairman of the non-parliamentary Voice and deputy Peter Pellegrini does not see the problem. No name bothered him. However, he still does not plan to express confidence in the cabinet. “It has a chance to be a technically better government than the government of Igor Matovič and Eduard Heger, but I do not think that it will be the government that will move Slovakia forward, it does not have a mandate for that,” he said.

“Rather, we should expect a calming of the situation and such a pragmatic, technical, expert management of the state’s daily agenda,” commented Pellegrini. He agreed with the president that the cabinet should not come up with any cultural issues or ideological topics, which Kollár also confirmed.

Neither Fico nor Remišová were invited

However, several leaders were not invited to the meeting, including the head of Smer and the chairman of For the People, Veronika Remišová. “The reasons why the president did not invite Robert Fico to the meeting can be found in all his public appearances from the last few days and also in Tuesday’s status of the president on social networks,” confirmed the president’s spokesperson Jozef Matej.

Political scientist from the Institute of Political Sciences of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (SAV) Juraj Marušiaka thinks that it is currently difficult to imagine Čaputová and Fico sitting at the same table. “Also with regard to the way Smer-SD refers to the president,” he told Pravda. “The second thing is what the constellation will be after the elections, but even before 2020 it was not a simple cohabitation,” he said.

Was it a good decision? According to Marušiak, it will not be possible to ignore Smer for a long time, and the party’s supporters will certainly perceive it as ignoring the strongest opposition club. “I just can’t imagine what such a negotiation would look like. The fact is that the current coalition, despite considerable efforts, failed to achieve the criminalization of Smer, or convince a substantial part of the electorate that it is a “mafia”. On the contrary, it was the coalition parties that brought this party back into the game after 2020,” he said.

Denník Pravda also contacted Remišová, but she did not respond by the deadline. However, the political scientist sees no reason why Čaputová should invite Remišová. “He represents a party that does not actually exist. On the other hand, sometimes even one vote can make a decision in the parliament,” added Marušiak.

Read more It will be a dispute between parliament vs. the president and “her” government? Now every party can pretend to be in opposition, says the political scientist

The other leaders did not want to comment on it. “I will not comment on it,” responded Heger. However, he added that Fico broke through the bottom with the way he comments on the president’s address. “Robert Fico sends malice into society for a long time,” he said.

The leader of the Liberals, Richard Sulík, would also not invite Fico and thinks that “it would be good to pay him a course of good behavior.” “He decided to go to the extreme,” said Matovič. “I’m not even surprised she didn’t invite him,” he added.

Another attempt to change the date

Smer MPs decided to once again initiate an extraordinary session of the parliament for the earlier date of the elections. Kollár announced the meeting for Thursday morning. The head of Smer Fico conditions the support for the official government by submitting a proposal to the NR SR to hold elections on July 1 or 8, immediately after its appointment in abbreviated legislative proceedings.

“The meeting was initiated by more than 40 deputies. Everyone confirmed that it would be most appropriate if the elections were held by the end of June. This is how the president promised, but then she deceived the nation,” said Fico in the ta3 show. He repeated that the principles of parliamentary democracy were violated when the official government was formed.

At this point, it is unlikely that an earlier date will be approved. Deputy Speaker of the Parliament Peter Pčolinský stated that it is mathematically impossible for early elections to be held in July. “You know very well that there is no 90 in the parliament, so why spin this topic and feed people false hope,” he said. Even the speaker of the parliament does not expect that the date of early elections will change. “This effort is just a bubble and chasing the press of Fico and Pellegrini,” Kollár said.

When the SaS party initiated the fall of the government in December last year, Smer and Hlas should have agreed with the liberals on an earlier date for elections in the spring, according to Kollár. There is no support for an earlier date. OĽaNO, Saxony and the Democrats reject an earlier date.

Heger considers considerations of an earlier date to be nonsense. He described the September election date as “the art of the possible”, the leaders of the former coalition agreed on it after long negotiations at the end of January. The president should appoint the official government next week, probably on Monday.