The cabinet of Eduard Heger was dismissed after the case of subsidies to the family business of the interim Agriculture Minister, Samuel Vlčan. Since December last year, the cabinet has lacked the confidence of the National Council of the Slovak Republic and has been governing under the supervision of Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová. It will be replaced by a government of experts headed by Ľudovít Ódor, Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Slovakia (NBS). The Head of State will appoint it in the week beginning 15 May.
Odor has accepted President Zuzana Caputova's offer to become the prime minister of a caretaker government and will resign on May 14 so that he can take up his new role, TASR learnt on Tuesday. The President will first inform the leaders of the political parties and then the public about the other names. The President sees the decision to appoint a caretaker government as the only possible step after last week's events. According to the President, the experts chosen will not stand in the next parliamentary elections. She expects the government of experts to stabilise the situation and lead Slovakia to early elections.
Both the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary opposition have long called for the appointment of a caretaker government. The president's decision was welcomed by several parties, who felt that Heger's cabinet should have resigned earlier. The coalition parties preferred that Heger's executive stay. Once appointed, the caretaker government will have to present a programme to parliament and ask for a vote of confidence. Whether it will get it is questionable. The political parties Smer-SD and Hlas-SD have again raised the issue of an earlier date for early elections. They are due to be held on 30 September, but the Speaker has not yet officially announced the date. Smer-SD and Hlas-SD parties want the elections to be held in early July. Smer-SD admitted that it would support the government of experts if the early elections were held earlier.
The leader of the Sme rodina party, Boris Kollár, does not consider the idea of moving the early elections to an earlier date to be realistic. Outgoing Prime Minister Heger called it nonsense. OĽANO also sees no reason to change the date of the early parliamentary elections. The National Criminal Investigation Agency (NAKA) is working on the case that brought Heger's government to an end. It is investigating a subsidy that the Ministry of the Environment of the Slovak Republic was to grant to a company whose final beneficiary was Vlčan. The subsidy for Samuel Vlčan's company has not yet been paid. This was announced to the media by the Interim Prime Minister, Eduard Heger, and the interim head of the Environment Ministry, Ján Budaj.
Source: TASR
