Movement for a Democratic Slovakia

Hnutie za Demokratické Slovensko Movement for a Democratic Slovakia
Party leader	1991–2013: Vladimír Mečiar 2013–2014: party committee under Sergej Kozlík
founding	March 5, 1991
Place of foundation	Bratislava
resolution	January 11, 2014
Headquarters	Tomášikova 32 / A P.O. Box 49 83000 Bratislava
Alignment	left-wing nationalist , populist , national-conservative
Colours)	White, blue, red (Slovak tricolor )
European party	2009–2014: European Democratic Party
EP Group	Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE)
Website	www.hzds.sk

The Hnutie za democické Slovensko (short name HZDS , German : Movement for a Democratic Slovakia , from 2003 Ľudová strana - HZDS , short name ĽS-HZDS , German: People's Party - HZDS ) was a Slovak political party that existed from 1991 to 2014 . It was founded by Vladimír Mečiar as a spin-off from the Verejnosi proti násiliu (Public Against Violence, VPN) and was represented in the Slovak Parliament from 1992 to 2010. A concrete ideological classification of the HZDS is difficult, experts usually ascribe a national - populist rhetoric as well as left positions in economic policy.

After its election victory in 1992, the HZDS was the main party of Slovak independence on January 1, 1993 and remained in power until 1998 with a brief interruption. As an opposition party, it continued to be the parliamentary group with the largest number of votes in the Slovak National Council until 2006 . After eight years in the opposition, the HZDS, which had meanwhile shrunk to a small party, again managed to participate in government as a junior partner in the Robert Fico I government from 2006 to 2010 . In the parliamentary elections in 2010 , the party failed for the first time at the 5% hurdle and has not been represented in parliament since then. On January 11, 2014, at the party congress in Žilina , the delegates decided to voluntarily dissolve the party and at the same time re-establish it as the party of democratic Slovakia .

Ideological positioning

The ideological classification of the Mečiar movement was difficult when it was founded in 1992 and has remained a problem for political science over the decades. In its self-promotion, the HZDS presented itself as “centrist” throughout . According to the Slovak political scientist Grigorij Mesežnikov, it was “not built on a program or an ideology, but the party of one man”, namely Mečiars. It therefore eluded the common left / right scheme. During her reign in the 1990s, she advocated economic reforms, but was less consistent in doing so than the Czech Post- Citizens' Forum parties, she emphasized “Slovak interests” and tried to avoid social hardship. Their politics were characterized by a “national accent”, but not radical nationalism. An important point of their rhetoric was the interests of the "common people".

Kai-Olaf Lang describes the HZDS and Mečiar as "the prime example of diffuse national populism in East Central Europe" . According to Simon Gruber (2010), the HZDS relied on Mečiar's “charisma and left-wing populist-nationalist rhetoric that was vague in terms of content” . The legal and political scientist Georg Brunner described the HZDS in 1997 as "left-wing nationalist-populist" , the political scientist Rozaliya Dimitrova and the Viennese journalist Werner Pirker represent the classification as "left-wing nationalist" , the German political scientists Hendrik Meyer and Olaf Wientzek describe the HZDS 2008 as " left national " .

The Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung , however, classified them as “right-wing populist” in 2002. The journalist Tomasz Konicz described the HZDS 2006 as "moderate nationalists". The Austrian Eastern Europe expert Hannes Hofbauer classified them in 2009 as “civil-national”. Klaudia Hanisch from the Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research described the party as “nationally conservative” in 2010, as did the Wiener Zeitung . In the young world she was also simply referred to as “conservative”. David Noack described the HZDS in the Austrian military magazine 2011 as " Gaullists ".

history

1990s

Vladimír Mečiar has been Prime Minister of the political movement Verejnosť proti násiliu (Public Against Violence, VPN) since the first free Slovak parliamentary elections in 1990 . However, there were internal tensions between Mečiar and the leadership of the movement, who already accused Mečiar of an authoritarian or nationalist style of government. Mečiar then founded the HZDS with his supporters and was dismissed from the office of prime minister by the VPN. In the 1992 National Council election , however, the HZDS was by far the group with the largest number of votes - it received 37.26% of the votes or 74 of 150 seats. The VPN did not make it back into the National Council. Mečiar was then again prime minister of a minority government. As the new Prime Minister, after brief negotiations with his Czech counterpart Václav Klaus , he agreed on the division of Czechoslovakia into two independent nation states with effect from January 1, 1993. As a compromise candidate for the HZDS, Michal Kováč became the new President of the now independent Slovakia after independence the original HZDS candidate Roman Kováč did not achieve the necessary 3/5 majority of the MPs in several ballots. After several months of negotiations, the Slovak National Party (SNS) entered the government.

In the months that followed, however, tensions arose between the new president and the prime minister, who in turn criticized Mečiar's authoritarian-nationalist leadership style. In addition, individual members of the HZDS and SNS parliamentary groups resigned because of the prime minister's leadership style and the nationalist course, so that the HZDS-SNS coalition lost its government majority in the course of the legislature. Mečiar was therefore recalled as Prime Minister by the National Council in March 1994. The new Prime Minister was the Foreign Minister Jozef Moravčík , who left the HZDS and led a broad coalition of almost all parties and MPs except for the HZDS and the SNS.

However, the HZDS won the early National Council election in 1994 with 34.97% of the vote (61 out of 150 members). She again formed a coalition with the SNS and the newly founded ZRS , which survived the full legislative period. Mečiar became Prime Minister for the third time.

The HZDS was also the strongest party in the 1998 parliamentary elections with 27%, just ahead of the SDK . However, Mečiar was no longer able to form a coalition. Several parties of different political spectra, the bourgeois SDK , the social democratic SDL, the Hungarian minority party SMK and the Party of Civil Understanding (SOP) instead united to form a broad "anti-Mečiar coalition" under Mikuláš Dzurinda . The HZDS was also unable to succeed in the Slovak presidential elections in May 1999. The election took place for the first time as a direct election after parliament had not been able to agree on a common candidate for president for months. As a candidate for the HZDS, Mečiar was defeated by Rudolf Schuster (SOP), who was supported by most of the government parties, with 37% to 47% in the first ballot and 43% to 57% in the second ballot.

2000s

In the national elections in 2002 , the HZDS was again just about the strongest party with 19.5%, but Prime Minister Mikuláš Dzurinda was able to remain in office in a center-right coalition. In the 2004 presidential election , Mečiar won the first ballot with 32.73% as a candidate for the HZDS. In the runoff election, however, he had to surrender with 40 to 60% of the former parliamentary president Ivan Gašparovič , who had been a member of the HZDS until 2002 and then founded the HZD and was also supported by the SMER . In the 2004 European elections , the LS-HZDS was the second strongest force with 17%, just behind the SDKU . The three MPs elected on the list of LS-HZDS remained non-attached.

In the 2006 elections , the ĽS-HZDS received 8.79% of the vote and was only able to move into parliament with 16 seats. It was now only the fifth strongest party in the National Council. As a junior partner of the left-wing SMER, it again formed a coalition government together with the right-wing populist SNS under SMER chairman Robert Fico as the new premier. The ĽS-HZDS provided two ministers, originally one less than the SNS, but later both smaller coalition partners had two ministerial posts.

From 2009 the ĽS-HZDS belonged to the European Democratic Party . In the 2009 European elections in Slovakia , she received 9% of the vote and only had one MP.

2010s

According to a survey in January 2010, the ĽS-HZDS would have had a voting potential of 5.4% in an election to the National Council. In the parliamentary elections on June 12, 2010, however, she only achieved 4.3% of the votes and was therefore unable to move into parliament for the first time in independent Slovakia. The poor performance of the former People's Party was already referred to in the Slovak press as the “end of the Mečiar era”. The ĽS-HZDS then announced a focus on regional and local elections. After that, however, the party was unable to achieve any significant successes in elections. In the early National Council elections in 2012 , the party only received 0.93% of the vote and was thus far from returning to parliament. Mečiar then announced his retirement from politics and resigned as party leader of the LS-HZDS in September 2013. In December 2013, he left the party after a dispute with the new provisional party leadership under Sergei Kozlík , as the new leadership allegedly prepared for the party's bankruptcy and liquidation. Shortly afterwards, on January 11, 2014, the LS-HZDS actually dissolved. However, the new party leadership spoke out in favor of establishing a new political movement under the name “ Strana Demokratického Slovenska ” (Party of Democratic Slovakia).

Spin-offs

The HZDS itself emerged as a spin-off from the Verejnosť proti násiliu (Public Against Violence, VPN), which after this spin-off transformed into Občianska Demokratieická únia - VPN (Civil Democratic Union - VPN, abbreviated to ODÚ-VPN, later just ODÚ), albeit after dissolved again after the failure in the 1992 elections .

After leaving the HZDS, Jozef Moravčík founded the Demokratická únia Slovenska (DeúS), which made it into the National Council in the 1994 elections with 8.6%. In 1995, the DeúS merged with the moderate split of the SNS Národno-Demokratieická strana (People's Democratic Party) , which came about in 1994, to form the Demokratická únia (Democratic Union). In 2000 this movement went into the SDKÚ-DS .

The Movement for Democracy (HDS), which was founded in 2002 and to which President Ivan Gašparovič belongs, is another spin-off from the HZDS. The HDS remained practically irrelevant in all elections except for the 2004 and 2009 presidential elections.

Election results in the overview

year	choice	Share of the vote	Parliament seats	space	government
1992	Parliamentary election 1992	37.3%	74/150	1.	Yes
1994	Parliamentary election 1994	35.0%	61/150	1.	Yes
1998	1998 general election	27.0%	43/150	1.	No
2002	General election 2002	19.5%	36/150	1.	No
2004	2004 European elections	17.0%	3/14	2.	-
2006	General election 2006	8.8%	15/150	5.	Yes
2009	European elections 2009	9.0%	1/14	5.	-
2010	General election 2010	4.3%	0/150	8th.	No
2012	General election 2012	0.9%	0/150	12.	No

Individual evidence

1. ^ From for party "Democratic Slovakia" (HZDS) . In: www.nachrichten.at , accessed on January 13, 2014, 4:15 pm.
2. ↑ HZDS definitívne skončilo, nahradí ho Strana Demokratického Slovenska. In: www.ta3.com , January 11, 2014, 10:46 p.m.
3. ^ Hannes Hofbauer, David X. Noack: Slovakia: The arduous way to the west. Promedia Verlag, Vienna 2013, p. 118.
4. ^ Hannes Hofbauer, David X. Noack: Slovakia: The arduous way to the west. Promedia Verlag, Vienna 2013, p. 119.
5. ↑ Simon Gruber: Wild East or Heart of Europe? Slovakia as an EU candidate country in the 1990s. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2010, p. 44f.
6. ↑ Kai-Olaf Lang: Populism in East Central Europe: Forms of Manifestation, Peculiarities and Opportunity Structures. In: Rudolf von Thadden, Anna Hofmann: Populism in Europe - Crisis or Democracy? Wallstein Verlag, 2005, pp. 137–154, here p. 141.
7. ↑ Simon Gruber: Wild East or Heart of Europe? Slovakia as an EU candidate country in the 1990s. V&R unipress, Göttingen 2010, p. 35.
8. ^ Georg Brunner: Two sides of the integration medal: ability to join and willingness to accept. In: Klaus Stern (ed.): Future problems of the European Union. Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1997, ISBN 3-11-015887-6 , p. 35.
9. ↑ Rozaliya Dimitrova: Delayed authoritarianism: Slovakia 1993-1998. In: Jerzy Macków (Ed.): Authoritarianism in Central and Eastern Europe. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-531-16845-6 , pp. 109-137, here p. 112.
10. ↑ Werner Pirker : Wrong choice . In: Junge Welt , June 15, 2010.
11. ↑ Hendrik Meyer, Olaf Wientzek: Neoliberal specter or role model of Central Europe? The Slovak welfare system. In: Klaus Schubert, Simon Hegelich , Ursula Bazant (eds.): European welfare systems. A manual. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2008, pp. 549–568, here p. 561.
12. ↑ Frank Spengler: Dzurinda wins, Meciar loses - rapid formation of a government expected. Country reports, Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Sankt Augustin, September 30, 2002.
13. ^ Tomasz Konicz: breathing space in Bratislava . In: Junge Welt , June 17, 2006. Available here.
14. ^ Hannes Hofbauer: Careful return of the state . In: Junge Welt , February 17, 2009. Available here.
15. ↑ Klaudia Hanisch: Trend reversal in the political culture of East Central Europe? Göttingen Institute for Democracy Research, June 23, 2010.
16. ↑ Karin Bachmann: New government wants to lift old amnesties. In: Wiener Zeitung (Online), August 16, 2010 (accessed November 20, 2013).
17. ^ Stefan Inführ: Election campaign against Roma . In: Junge Welt , March 15, 2010.
18. ↑ David Noack: The foreign policy of the Slovak Republic from Meciar to Fico - a “vision of political independence”? In: Austrian Military Journal , No. 6/2011.
19. ↑ http://www.rozhlas.sk/inetportal/rsi/core.php?page=showSprava&id=24959&lang=3
20. ↑ Pravica môže vládnuť, má o 8 kresiel viac (Slovak) , SME. Retrieved June 13, 2010. 
21. ↑ Mečiarova éra v slovenskej politike sa skončila (Slovak) , SME. June 13, 2010. 
22. ↑ Retrieved January 11, 2014
23. ↑ Retrieved on January 11, 2014  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.