Michal Kováč
Michal Kováč (born August 5, 1930 in Ľubiša ; † October 5, 2016 in Bratislava ) was a Slovak politician of the ČSFR and after the establishment of Slovakia from 1993 to 1998 the first president of the new state .
Life
After studying economics in 1956, Kováč first worked as an assistant at the Bratislava School of Economics , then in a bank in Bratislava. From 1965–66 he lectured at a banking school in Cuba , and from 1967–69 he was secretary of the Czechoslovak commercial bank ŽB in London . In 1969 he was recalled to Czechoslovakia but expelled from the Communist Party in the aftermath of the Prague Spring of 1970 . He then worked as a bank clerk in Bratislava until 1989 .
In 1989 Kováč took an active part in the Velvet Revolution ; In December 1989 he became Minister of Finance of the Slovak Republic of Czechoslovakia and remained so until May 18, 1991. From June 1990 he was a member of the Federal Assembly of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic . On June 26, 1992, he was elected Chairman of the Federal Assembly and held this office until the dissolution of Czechoslovakia on December 31, 1992.
On February 15, 1993 the parliament elected him as a member of the strongest party HZDS led by Vladimír Mečiar as the first president of the new Slovak state. Kováč was the compromise candidate after the original candidate of his party, Roman Kováč (the identity of the name is purely coincidental), was unable to meet the required consensus quorum after multiple rounds due to the veto of the opposition. His inauguration took place on March 2, 1993. He soon came into conflict with Prime Minister Mečiar . The arguments between the two lasted until the end of Kováč's tenure.
In March 1993, the Mečiar government lost its parliamentary majority. On March 9, 1994, Kováč gave the annual speech on the state of the republic, in which he sharply criticized Mečiar's policies and his confrontational style of government. As a result, on March 11, the opposition passed a motion of no confidence with a narrow majority, and on March 16, Kováč appointed a new government under Jozef Moravčík . But in the new elections on September 30th / 1. October 1994 Mečiars HZDS was again the strongest party and Mečiar again Prime Minister.
A spectacular incident was the kidnapping of Kováč 's younger son Michal in August 1995 to Austria, where an arrest warrant had been issued against him. Although this action was obviously intended to discredit Michal Kováč Sr., the precise responsibilities could never be fully clarified. One of the main reasons for this was an amnesty for those involved, which Mečiar issued after the presidential term, when he was administering the presidency during the vacancy.
Kováč spent the last years of his life in Bratislava and was last ill with Parkinson's disease . After years of political abstinence, shortly before the second round of the presidential election in Slovakia in 2014 , Kováč joined his two successors and recommended the election of the social democratic prime minister Robert Fico instead of the politically inexperienced oligarch Andrej Kiska .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Tatiana Jancarikova, Angus MacSwan, Hugh Lawson: Michal Kovac, first president of independent Slovakia, dies at 86 . Reuters , October 5, 2016, accessed October 7, 2016.
- ↑ The Slovak success story . Prager Zeitung , August 8, 2012, accessed October 7, 2016.
- ^ David Noack: Oligarch becomes new President of Slovakia . Neues Deutschland , March 31, 2014, accessed October 7, 2016.
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Kováč, Michal |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Slovak politician and president |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 5th August 1930 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ľubiša |
| DATE OF DEATH | 5th October 2016 |
| Place of death | Bratislava |