Slovakia is set to receive a new prime minister following the resignation of Igor Matovič.
On Monday, Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová received Minister of Finance Eduard Heger, of the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities party (OĽaNO). After the meeting, he confirmed that the head of state would accept the resignation Matovič (OĽaNO) on Tuesday and ask him to form a new government.
“I will also give the president a list of the names of the new government, which I will present to her tomorrow,” Heger said after the meeting.
After a month of quarrels and disputes, on Sunday, a four-member government coalition agreed to exchange positions between Matovič and Heger. The current minister of finance will form a new cabinet and Matovič will become minister of finance. This solution, proposed by Matovič’s OĽaNO movement, was agreed by Richard Sulík’s Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party, We Are Family of Parliament Speaker Boris Kollár, and the For the People party led by Veronika Remišová.
“We can all trust Mr. Heger fully,” Matovič said on Sunday after announcing his resignation.
Boris Kollár stated that he believes that the coalition will come together after the crisis. “I welcome this step by Prime Minister Igor Matovič, which will end the crisis in the coalition,” said Kollár.
The ministers will return
The ministers who have resigned in recent weeks should return to the government led by Heger. On behalf of the SaS party, Sulík should return to the head of the Ministry of Economy, Ivan Korčok to the head of Slovak diplomacy, and Branislav Gröhling should again be the minister of education. On behalf of the For the People Party, Mária Kolíková will return to the chair of the minister of justice.
However, Marek Krajčí will not return to the position of minister of health and Milan Krajniak (We are a Family) to head the Ministry of Labor, Social Affairs, and Family. According to media reports, General Vladimír Lengvarský, director of the Central Military Hospital in Ružomberok, should become the minister of health.
The government crisis broke out in Slovakia about a month ago when Matovič secretly imported the Russian Sputnik vaccine to Slovakia. The SaS party demanded his resignation from the head of government. However, disagreements between Matovič and Sulík have been obvious for a long time.
Title image: Eduard Heger (Facebook)
