SLOVAKIA-POLITICS: Finally a New Government, But Will it Last?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

David Rocks

PRAGUE, Dec 19 1994 (IPS) - More than two months after national elections, Slovakia finally has a new government, but its composition of extreme right wing and left wing politicians is a worrying sign to Slovakians.

“A lot of intellectuals are saying that there will be a crisis very soon, and there will be new elections very soon,” said Ludmila Malikova, a political science professor at Bratislava’s Comenius University.

For the third time since 1990, Vladimir Meciar last week assumed the post of prime minister, 10 weeks after early-term elections in which his party won a plurality with 35 percent of the vote.

The ruling coalition includes members from the extreme-left Association of Slovak Workers and the right-wing nationalist Slovak National Party, as well as Meciar’s own Movement for a Democratic Slovakia.

Questions about Meciar’s commitment to democratic procedures, as well as his coalition partners’ commitment to privatisation and joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and the European Union (EU), raise concerns that Slovakia may fall behind its former-Soviet Bloc neighbours in economic reform and integration with the West.

The pugnacious and populistic Meciar was first elected prime minister of the regional government in the Slovak Republic while it was still part of the Czechoslovak federation. He was removed from the post in 1991, then re-elected after the 1992 federal elections in which his party won a plurality in Slovakia.

Meciar guided Slovakia to independence on Jan. 1, 1993, and then led a turbulent government until he was again recalled in a no- confidence motion in March of this year.

The European Union has already expressed its concern about democratic procedures in the Meciar-dominated Slovak Parliament.

The EU’s political committee issued a note to the Slovaks in the wake of the parliament’s first post-election session, during which Meciar and his allies reversed a number of key privatisations made by the outgoing government, fired the head of the state security apparatus and took control of councils that oversee radio and television broadcasting in the country.