„Crown prince“ leaves major coalition member

„Crown prince“ leaves major coalition member

MP and former Culture Minister Marek Maďarič is leaving the ruling coalition as well as his party SMER-SD. His assistant Jozef Bednar informed the media about this. "I do not want to bring myself or my colleagues in the coalition into a situation where as a coalition member I am not voting in favour of a growing number of governmental or coalition proposals. I do not want to be part of a coalition in which a politician who follows the example of [Viktor] Orban's politics of weakening democracy and drifting away from the European Union has the main word. As the SMER-SD party is part of the governing coalition, I have also decided to leave this political party," MP said.

"Marek Maďarič has always been a person with great analytical skills and he hit the nail on the head when stating that Andrej Danko plays first fiddle in the current coalition", the political commentator Marián Leško said for RTVS. In his opinion, the parliamentary chairman comes with initiatives to which the whole coalition has to adapt. Earlier this week, Andrej Danko announced that he would follow the tendencies of Viktor Orban in Hungary and Jaroslaw Kaczynski in Poland and their idea of stricter centralisation of power.

Slovak media viewed Marek Maďarič as the brain behind SMER's policies. Having been a member of the party since 2000, he was considered to be the "crown prince" until the presidential elections in 2014 when its chairman Robert Fico failed against the incumbent president Andrej Kiska.

"Marek Maďarič planned to resign from his position as SMER party Deputy Chair already back then", commentator Marián Leško pointed out for RTVS. However, Robert Fico persuaded him to stay as the party lacked any other person who would create its social democratic policies. Nevertheless, Marek Maďarič resigned from his position at the party congress in December 2017. After the death of the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak, he also resigned also his position as Culture Minister.

At a press conference on Thursday, Smer-SD leader Robert Fico stated that the decision by Marek Maďarič to leave Smer-SD and the governing coalition was no surprise to party representatives. "We expected him to take this formal step. It has no impact on the functioning of the coalition, however, seeing as Marek Maďarič either wasn't present during votes or voted differently," claimed Fico, who thanked him for his co-operation and wished him the best of luck in future endeavours. Leaving the Smer-SD party as well as the governing coalition is Marek Maďarič 's personal decision, stated the coalition Most-Híd's party leader Bela Bugár on Thursday in response to this step. Meanwhile, Parliamentary Chairman and coalition Slovak National Party head Andrej Danko responded via his spokesman, Tomáš Kostelník, that he would not comment on Maďarič's departure.

Following his departure, Smer-SD's caucus will shrink to 48 members, with the junior coalition parties Slovak National Party (SNS) and Most-Híd having 15 and 13 MP seats each in the House, respectively. The coalition will thus be leaning on a tight majority of 76 votes.


Martina Šimkovičová, Photo: TASR

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