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Ivan Gašparovič
President of Slovakia
Incumbent
Assumed office 15 June 2004
Prime Minister	Mikuláš Dzurinda Robert Fico Iveta Radičová Robert Fico
Preceded by	Rudolf Schuster
In office 14 July 1998 – 30 October 1998 Acting Served with Vladimír Mečiar
Prime Minister	Vladimír Mečiar
Preceded by	Michal Kováč
Succeeded by	Mikuláš Dzurinda (Acting) Jozef Migaš (Acting)
Speaker of the National Council
In office 1 January 1993 – 30 October 1998
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Jozef Migaš
In office 23 June 1992 – 29 October 1998
Preceded by	František Mikloško
Succeeded by	Jozef Migaš
Member of the National Council
In office 23 June 1992 – 15 October 2002
Personal details
Born	(1941-03-27) 27 March 1941 (age 71) Poltár, Slovakia
Political party	Communist Party (1968)[1] Movement for Democracy (1992–present)
Spouse(s)	Silvia Beníková
Alma mater	Comenius University in Bratislava
Religion	Roman Catholic[2]
Signature

President George W. Bush and Slovak President Ivan Gašparovič in Grassalkovich Palace in Bratislava

Ivan Gašparovič (Slovak pronunciation: [ˈɪʋan ˈgaʃparɔʋɪt͡ʃ]), (born 27 March 1941) is a Slovak politician and law professor who has been the President of Slovakia since 15 June 2004. He is also the first Slovak president to be re-elected.

Biography[link]

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Gašparovič was born in Poltár, near Lučenec and Banská Bystrica in present day south-central Slovakia, that time in the first Slovak Republic. His father, Vladimir Gašparović, emigrated to Slovakia from Croatia at the end of World War I and was a teacher at a (secondary school) in Bratislava, and at one point its Headmaster.

Gašparovič studied at the Law Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava, which is the main university in Slovakia, from 1959 to 1964. He worked in the District Prosecutor's Office of the district of Martin (1965–66), then became a Prosecutor at the Municipal Prosecutor's Office of Bratislava (1966–68). In 1968, he joined the Communist Party of Slovakia, supposedly to support Alexander Dubček's reforms, but he was expelled from the party after the Warsaw Pact invasion in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (see History of Czechoslovakia).

Early career[link]

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However, in spite of his expulsion, Gašparovič was able to continue his legal career and from 1968 to July 1990, he was a teacher at the Department of Criminal Law, Criminology and Criminological Practice at the Law Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava. In February 1990, he became the prorector (deputy vice-chancellor) of Comenius University.

After the Velvet Revolution and the subsequent fall of the Communist regime, Gašparovič was chosen by the newly elected democratic president Václav Havel to become the country's federal Prosecutor-General. After March 1992, he was briefly the Vice-President of the Legislative Council of Czechoslovakia, before the federal Czechoslovakia split into two independent states in January 1993. Gašparovič temporarily returned to the Comenius University Law Faculty. He was a member of the Scientific Council of the Comenius University and of the Scientific Council of the Law Faculty of the same university. In late 1992, he was one of the authors of the Constitution of Slovakia.

In 1992 Gašparovič joined the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS, Hnutie za demokratické Slovensko), led by the controversial Vladimír Mečiar. Gašparovič was one of the central figures of Prime Minister Mečiar's administration that was generally perceived as authoritarian^{[citation needed]}. He became Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic (NRSR) after the victory of the HZDS in the June 1992 elections. When a scandal erupted over the discovery of microphones in the U.S. Consulate in November 1992, Gašparovič was asked by Mečiar to head a commission to investigate the background of the affair, but the results were inconclusive. Later that year, when Mečiar's government attempted to close down opposition-led Trnava University, Gašparovič sided with the Prime Minister, echoing his argument that its opening was "illegal." The West viewed the regime as untrustworthy, and the country was excluded from the EU and NATO expansion talks that went on at the time at the neighbouring central European countries.

The period of the HZDS rule was among other things marked by persistent animosity between the HZDS-led government and the country's President Michal Kováč, a vocal opponent of the Mečiar regime. The conflict had gotten to the point where the Slovak Secret Service SIS was alleged to have kidnapped the president's son, Michal Jr., plying him with alcohol, and dropping him in front of a police station in nearby Hainburg in Austria, a country where he was wanted on suspicion of financial fraud.

A part of this continuous feud was Gašparovič's widely publicized derogatory comment made in reference to President Kováč not being aware that the parliamentary microphone was on, calling Kováč "an old dick"{starého chuja}.

From October 1998 to 15 July 2002, when his HZDS was an opposition party, Gašparovič was a member of the parliamentary Committee for the Supervision of the SIS (the Slovak equivalent of CIA). He was also a member of the delegation of the Slovak parliament in the Interparliamentary Union.

In July 2002 after four years in opposition Gašparovič left the HZDS after Mečiar decided not to include him and some other HZDS members on the ballot for the upcoming elections. Gašparovič along with the other members immediately (on 12 July) founded a new party, the Hnutie za demokraciu (HZD) Movement for Democracy, a name bearing a close resemblance to his former HZDS. The cited reasons for the departure were internal disputes within the party, or as Gašparovič put it in an interview with The Slovak Spectator, "differences of opinion with HZDS leader [Vladimír] Mečiar, mostly about the leadership of the party."^[3] In the September 2002 elections his party polled 3.3 percent, not enough to win seats in the parliament. After the elections, Gašparovič returned to the Law Faculty of the Comenius University, and wrote several university textbooks as well as working papers and studies on criminal law.

In April 2004 Gašparovič decided to run for the presidency against Vladimír Mečiar and the then governing coalition's candidate Eduard Kukan. In an unexpected turn of events, the perceived underdog Gašparovič received the second highest number of votes and moved on to the second round, once again facing Mečiar. The main factor for Gašparovič's first round success was the low turnout of the front-runner Kukan's electorate, as Kukan was generally considered to be a sure bet for the second round. In other words, the majority of the population viewed the first round as a formality, and was saving their effort for the second round to keep Mečiar at bay. Hence in the second round the (potential) Eduard Kukan voters faced an uneasy choice between two representatives of the past regime. Ultimately, Gašparovič, regarded by Mečiar opponents as the "lesser evil", was elected as the president (see Slovakia presidential election, 2004).

President of Slovakia[link]

Gašparovič's toned down and non-confrontational approach to presidency has increased his popularity with many voters, and he is a generally popular president now. However, to date he has remained unapologetic about his role in the Mečiar's regime, which is generally perceived to have set back Slovakia's post-communist political and economic progress and development. Gašparovič was supported by the Direction – Social Democracy of Prime Minister Robert Fico and the Slovak National Party^[4] a nationalist and populist party^[5] led by Jan Slota.

Controversies[link]

In an 23 August statement Gašparovič opposed erecting a sculpture in János Esterházy’s memory in Kosice, saying that the one-time deputy had been a follower of Hitler and fascism. He also opposed Ferdinand Ďurčanský's sculpture in that case. The president said the Hungarian ethnic politician and martyr was a supporter of Nazism.^[6] In fact Esterházy had been the only member of the Slovak parliament to vote against anti-Jewish laws in 1942. The one-time deputy had always rejected both fascism and communism, suffered in the Gulag and died in a Moravian prison in 1957.^[7]

Hungary’s Foreign Ministry the next day rejected Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic’s statement and said that the ideology reflected in the statement did not contribute to the development of bilateral relations. The ministry “notes with regret and incomprehension” that issues surrounding the martyred count are in the focus of daily Slovak politics, the ministry said. The achievements of Esterházy are recognised in many countries including Israel, the statement noted. Marek Trubac, the Slovak president’s spokesman, told MTI that Esterházy is considered a war criminal in Slovakia, “for supporting fascist ideology”. Though Esterházy did vote against the anti-Jewish bills, he also welcomed (former Hungarian regent) Horthy’s “fascist troops” that occupied Kosice, the spokesman added.

Hungarian Deputy Prime Minister Zsolt Semjén said he was appalled by Gasparovic’s statement. He said that Esterházy “heroically exercised the virtues” and was all along committed to the teachings of the Catholic Church, so it is not by chance that his beatification is under way. Semjén called the attack on Esterházy’s memory an insult to the Hungarian nation and the Catholic Church and a violation of universal human rights.^[8]

Hungarian President Pál Schmitt said "it is unacceptable that János Esterházy, this true democrat and humanist, still qualifies as a war criminal in Slovakia". The president noted that the Hungarian government and his predecessors had repeatedly initiated Esterházy’s rehabilitation. Schmitt closed the letter with the hope that his forthcoming meeting with Gašparovič in Budapest would focus on the two countries’ common values.^[9]

Private life[link]

In 1964, Gašparovič married Silvia Beníková, with whom he has two children. His favorite sport is American basketball.^[10]

Honours and awards[link]

•  Slovakia : Grand Master and Grand Cross (or 1st Class) of the Order of the White Double Cross

Foreign honours[link]

•  Italy : Knight Grand Cross decorated with Grand Cordon of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (20 February 2007)
•  Croatia : Knight Grand Cross of the Grand Order of King Tomislav ("For outstanding contribution to the promotion of friendship and development co-operation between the Republic of Croatia and the Slovak Republic." – 27 October 2008)
•  Poland : Order Orła Białego 21 February 2009
•  Estonia : Collar of the Order of the Cross of Terra Mariana

See also[link]

• List of political parties in Slovakia
• List of Presidents of Slovakia
• List of leaders of Slovak parliaments
• Slovakia presidential election, 2004
• Silvia Gašparovičová

References[link]

External links[link]

• (Slovak) Campaign website
• Official website

v t e Presidents of Slovakia First Slovak Republic Jozef Tiso* (1939) · Jozef Tiso (1939-1945) Slovak Republic Michal Kováč (1993-1998) · Rudolf Schuster (1999-2004) · Ivan Gašparovič (2004-) Slovak Republic (acting presidents) Vladimír Mečiar (1993) · Vladimír Mečiar and Ivan Gašparovič (1998) · Mikuláš Dzurinda and Jozef Migaš (1998-1999)

v t e Speakers of the National Council of the Slovak Republic Ivan Gašparovič (1993-1998)  · Jozef Migaš (1998-2002)  · Pavol Hrušovský (2002-2006)  · Béla Bugár(acting) (2006)  · Pavol Paška (2006-2010)  · Richard Sulík (2010-2011)  · Pavol Hrušovský (2011-2012)  · Pavol Paška (2012-present)

Vladimír Mečiar
1st and 3rd Prime Minister of Slovakia
In office 13 December 1994 – 30 October 1998
President	Michal Kováč
Preceded by	Jozef Moravčík
Succeeded by	Mikuláš Dzurinda
In office 24 June 1992 – 16 March 1994
President	Michal Kováč
Preceded by	Ján Čarnogurský
Succeeded by	Jozef Moravčík
In office 27 June 1990 – 6 May 1991
Preceded by	Milan Čič
Succeeded by	Ján Čarnogurský
President of Slovakia Acting
In office 2 March 1998 – 30 October 1998 Serving with Ivan Gašparovič (Acting)
Preceded by	Michal Kováč
Succeeded by	Mikuláš Dzurinda (Acting) Jozef Migaš (Acting)
In office 1 January 1993 – 2 March 1993
Preceded by	Position established
Succeeded by	Michal Kováč
Minister of the Interior of Slovakia
In office 11 January 1990 – 27 June 1990
Prime Minister	Milan Čič
Preceded by	Milan Čič
Succeeded by	Anton Andráš
Member of the National Council
In office 15 October 2002 – 12 June 2010
In office 16 March 1994 – 13 December 1994
Personal details
Born	(1942-07-26) 26 July 1942 (age 69) Zvolen, Slovakia
Political party	People's Party-Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (1991–present)
Other political affiliations	Communist Party (Before 1970) Independent (1970–1989) Public Against Violence (1989–1991)
Spouse(s)	Margarita Mečiar
Alma mater	Comenius University in Bratislava

Vladimír Mečiar (born 26 July 1942) is a former Slovak politician who served three times as Prime Minister of Slovakia serving from 1990 to 1991, from 1992 to 1994, and from 1994 to 1998. He is the leader of the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (ĽS-HZDS). Mečiar led Slovakia to disengagement from the Czech Republic in January 1993 and was one of the leading presidential candidates in Slovakia in 1999 and 2004. He has been criticised by his opponents as well as by Western political organisations for having an autocratic style of administration.

Czechoslovakia[link]

He was born in Zvolen in 1942 as the eldest of four boys. His father was a tailor, and his mother a housewife. His wife Margita is a medical doctor and he has four children. Starting in the Communist Party of Slovakia, the only road to prominence in Communist Czechoslovakia, he became committee chairman in the town of Žiar nad Hronom, only to be dismissed in the year after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, when he delivered a pro-reform speech to the national congress in 1969 and was thrown out. A year later he was also expelled from the Communist Party and then added to the Communist Party Central Committee's long list of enemies of the socialist regime. He put himself through the Faculty of Law of the Comenius University while working in a glass factory.

In late 1989, during the fast-paced 1989 anti-Communist Velvet Revolution, he entered the new political party, Public Against Violence (Verejnosť proti násiliu, VPN), which was the Slovak counterpart to the better-known Czech Civic Forum. On 11 January 1990, when the VPN was looking for professionals to participate in the government of Slovakia, Mečiar was appointed the new Minister of the Interior and Environment of Slovakia on a recommendation of Alexander Dubček, who was impressed by Mečiar‘s thorough knowledge in all relevant fields.

After the first democratic elections in Czecho-Slovakia in June 1990, he was named Slovak premier (representing the VPN) of a coalition government of VPN and the Christian Democratic Movement. He advocated economic reform and continued federation with the Czechs.

In 1990 the political landscape of the Czech Republic and Slovakia started to develop and many new political parties were formed, mainly from the Civic Forum and the VPN. By the end of 1990, some of Mečiar‘s partners in the VPN began distancing themselves from him. First, the party split into two fractions in early March 1991: the Mečiar supporters (mostly members of his cabinet) and Mečiar opponents (led by the VPN chairman Fedor Gál). On 23 April 1991, the Presidium of the Slovak parliament (Slovak National Council) deposed him as premier of Slovakia and he was replaced by Ján Čarnogurský, the leader of the Christian Democratic Movement. Three days later, the VPN officially split in two: the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and the remaining VPN (since October 1991 called ODÚ-VPN, later just ODÚ). Mečiar was elected HZDS chairman in June 1991.

Dissolution of Czechoslovakia[link]

In 1991 and 1992, there were frequent, but fruitless, negotiations between the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic concerning the future relations between the two constituent republics of Czecho-Slovakia. The winners of the June 1992 elections in Czechoslovakia and new prime ministers were the Civic Democratic Party led by Václav Klaus in the Czech Republic and the HZDS led by Vladimír Mečiar in Slovakia. Before and shortly after this election, the HZDS supported the creation of a looser federation—a confederation—between the two republics. However, its Czech counterpart wanted an even more centralised Czechoslovakia than was the case in 1992 or two separate countries.^{[citation needed]} Since these two concepts were irreconcilable, Mečiar and Klaus agreed (after intense negotiations, but without having consulted the population in a referendum) on 23 July in Bratislava to dissolve Czecho-Slovakia and to create two independent states. As a result, Mečiar and Klaus became the prime ministers of two independent states on 1 January 1993.

Slovakia[link]

After eight members of the parliament left the HZDS in March 1993, Mečiar lost his parliamentary majority. At the same time Mečiar's HZDS also lost the support of the president, Michal Kováč, who was originally nominated by the HZDS. However, it was only in March 1994 that he was unseated as prime minister by the parliament (National Council of the Slovak Republic) and the opposition parties created a new government under Jozef Moravčík's lead. However, after the elections held at the turn of September and October 1994, in which his HZDS won 35% of the vote, he became prime minister again - in a coalition with the far-right Slovak National Party headed by the controversial Ján Slota, and the radical-left Združenie robotníkov Slovenska headed by the colourful Ján Ľupták, a mason.

During the following period, he was constantly criticized by his opponents and Western countries for an autocratic style of administration, lack of respect for democracy, misuse of state media for propaganda, corruption (which is still prevalent today) and the shady privatisation of national companies that occurred during his rule. Privatisation during the 1990s in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic was harmed by widespread unlawful asset stripping (also described by the journalistic term of tunnelling).

At the same time Mečiar was at permanent "war" with the then-President of Slovakia, Michal Kováč. He was also blamed for having engaged the Slovak secret service (SIS) in the abduction of the President’s son Michal Kováč, Jr. — wanted on a warrant for a financial crime in Germany — to Hainburg, Austria, in August 1995, but his guilt has not been proven.^[1] However, after Kovač's term expired in March 1998 the Slovak parliament was unable to elect a successor, so Mečiar also temporarily assumed the role of acting president. As president, he issued an amnesty for some of those accused of the abduction. As a result, Slovakia under his rule became partially isolated from the West and the pace of EU and NATO accession negotiations was much slower than in the case of neighboring countries, although Mečiar supported both EU and NATO membership for his country and submitted Slovakia's applications to both organisations. In 2000, Mečiar was arrested by Slovakian police on charges of fraud dating from his term in office.^[2][3]

Mečiar and HZDS narrowly finished first in the 1998 elections, with 27% of the vote. However, he was unable to create a coalition, and Mikuláš Dzurinda from the opposition became the new Prime Minister. Afterwards, Mečiar was one of the two leading candidates for the first direct election of the president of Slovakia in 1999, but he was defeated by Rudolf Schuster. In 2000, Mečiar‘s HZDS was renamed "People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia".

In 2000 Mečiar ostensibly gave up his political ambitions. His HZDS colleague Augustín Marián Húska said: "The NATO-War against Yugoslavia in 1999 was also a signal to us, to not pursue any vision of political independence anymore. We have seen what will happen to forces that want to be independent."^[4]

Mečiar was heavily favoured to win the 2002 election, even though it was thought that if he became prime minister again, it would end any chance of Slovakia getting into the EU. The 2002 elections saw the HZDS score the highest percentage (20%) again. However, as in 1998, no other party was willing to serve under him. The result was another term in government for Dzurinda. The lower percentage of Mečiar's HZDS (20%) compared to the 1998 result was due to internal disputes within the organization shortly before the election, which caused many traditional HZDS members to leave the party. Some of them created the HZD (Movement for Democracy) party led by Ivan Gašparovič. In 2003, further traditional HZDS members left the party and most of them created the People's Union (Ľudová únia).

In the 2004 presidential election Mečiar again tried to become Slovak president, but he was defeated in the second round by his former long-standing ally Ivan Gašparovič. In 2006 Parliamentary election in Slovakia, HZDS suffered the worst election result in its history (8.79%), leading Mečiar to request an examination of the election results.^[5] While HZDS became part of Robert Fico's coalition, Mečiar himself was not named to cabinet. He declined to get involved in the 2009 presidential election but also denied that he was considering political retirement.

In the Slovak parliamentary election, 2010 Mečiar's HZDS did not receive enough votes to reach the parliament for the first time in its history. In the 2012 elections, the HZDS again received sufficient votes to gain any representatives in parliament.

See also[link]

• List of political parties in Slovakia
• List of Presidents of Slovakia
• List of Prime Ministers of Slovakia
• Ivan Lexa
• Jaroslav Svěchota

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official biography

v t e Presidents of Slovakia First Slovak Republic Jozef Tiso* (1939) · Jozef Tiso (1939-1945) Slovak Republic Michal Kováč (1993-1998) · Rudolf Schuster (1999-2004) · Ivan Gašparovič (2004-) Slovak Republic (acting presidents) Vladimír Mečiar (1993) · Vladimír Mečiar and Ivan Gašparovič (1998) · Mikuláš Dzurinda and Jozef Migaš (1998-1999)