Vladimír Mečiar

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Vladimír Mečiar 2004

Vladimír Mečiar (born July 26, 1942 in Zvolen , Slovakia ) is a former Slovak politician , lawyer and amateur boxer . From 1990 to 1991 he was the first freely elected Prime Minister of Slovakia , then again from 1992 to 1994 and 1994 to 1998. He was long-time chairman of the HZDS party he founded (1991–2013).

Mečiar was first Slovak interior minister in 1990 and prime minister after the parliamentary elections in 1990 . As such, he presented himself as a defender of the social and national interests of the Slovaks within Czechoslovakia and, during his first government , held popularity ratings of up to 90% of the Slovak population in surveys. During his second government , he negotiated the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia together with the Czech Prime Minister Václav Klaus , whereupon Slovakia gained state independence in 1993 .

At the same time, Mečiar's style of government - especially during his third government from 1994 to 1998 - was criticized as autocratic and nationalistic . In terms of foreign policy, Slovakia under Mečiar became increasingly isolated from the EU and the USA . Numerous serious political and economic affairs and scandals are connected with Mečiar's third term in office, the investigation and clarification of which prevented the so-called "Mečiar amnesties " (Slovak: Mečiarove amnestie ) granted by him for a long time. An investigation into the incidents was only possible after the constitutional court confirmed the parliamentary repeal of the amnesty law on May 31, 2017.

After Mečiar was defeated in the presidential elections in the runoff election in 1999 and 2004 as an opposition politician, he and his 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 , his party failed for the first time at the 5 percent hurdle and failed to make it into parliament. After the HZDS failed to enter parliament in the parliamentary elections in 2012 , Mečiar resigned as party leader in 2013.

Life and Politics until 1990

Mečiar began his political career in the Communist Youth Association , from 1962 he was a member of the Communist Party . After the Prague Spring he was expelled from the party in 1970 because of his negative attitude towards the invasion of the Warsaw Pact troops , but was able to study law by distance learning and was then a business lawyer until 1990.

Slovak Prime Minister (1990–1998)

Parliamentary elections 1990 and Mečiar I government

In the Velvet Revolution , he took an active part in the Verejnosť proti násiliu (Public Against Violence, VPN) movement. From January 1990 he was Minister of the Interior of the Slovak Republic . In June 1990 the VPN won the first free parliamentary elections in Slovakia after the fall of the communist dictatorship with 29.3% of the vote. The VPN then formed a coalition with the Christian Democratic KDH and the Democratic Party. Mečiar became the first freely elected Prime Minister of the Slovak state. On March 5, 1991, during a council meeting of the VPN, Mečiar was accused of pursuing nationalist politics and spreading anti-Czech and anti-Semitic false reports. Mečiar then left the meeting with 15 other council members and announced the establishment of his own party, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), of which he became chairman. On April 23, 1991 Mečiar was deposed as Prime Minister by the Slovak Parliamentary Council and replaced by the Christian Democrat Ján Čarnogurský .

Parliamentary elections 1992 and the Mečiar II government

Party logo of Mečiars HZDS

With slogans and promises that appealed to both national pride and the need for social protection of the voters, the HZDS won the parliamentary elections in June 1992 with 37.3% of the vote and Mečiar was again Slovak Prime Minister. According to the Slovak historian Dušan Kováč, the situation in Czech-Slovak relations changed fundamentally after the 1992 elections. Until then, the will to compromise would have prevailed among politicians in both parts of the country, while after the 1992 elections the winners wanted to dissolve the common state as quickly as possible for reasons of power politics.

Neither the Slovak HZDS nor victorious in the Czech part of the country ODS by Vaclav Klaus had a dissolution of Czechoslovakia in its election manifesto. After the negotiations between Mečiar and Klaus about a joint Czech-Slovak government remained unsuccessful, the Slovak parliament passed a declaration of sovereignty on July 17, 1992, which is considered to be the basis for Slovakia's subsequent independence. Of the 150 MPs in Bratislava, 113 voted for, 24 against the declaration of sovereignty and 10 abstained. From July 20, Czecho-Slovakia no longer had a head of state, as the only candidate for the post of Czecho-Slovak President Václav Havel could not be re-elected, mainly because of the lack of Slovak votes. The Constitution of the Slovak Republic came into force on October 1, 1992, and at midnight 1992/1993 the Czech and Slovak Federal Republics split into two independent successor states: the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic .

After independence, Mečiar retained the office of prime minister, and the HZDS candidate Michal Kováč was elected president in February . After 8 members of the HZDS left the party in protest against the Prime Minister's authoritarian methods, the Mečiar government lost its majority in parliament and began to hold coalition talks with the Slovak National Party (SNS), but it was not until October 1993 that a coalition government was formed. In his New Year's address in 1994, President Kováč criticized the Mečiar government for its majority risk and advocated a broad coalition government. However, this was vehemently rejected by the HZDS. In March 1994, President Mečiar again criticized Mečiar, whereupon he was deposed as Prime Minister by parliament. His successor was Jozef Moravčík , who was only in office for 9 months and was mainly supposed to prepare Slovakia for the new elections.

Parliamentary elections 1994 and the Mečiar III government

The parliamentary elections of November 1994 won again Mečiars HZDS with 35% of the vote. It formed a coalition government with the left-wing populist ZRS and the nationalist SNS . The government took over this new coalition in a relatively authoritarian manner when it filled all functions in parliament and in parliamentary committees as well as the posts of television and radio broadcaster with its own candidates during the parliamentary session on the night of November 3rd to 4th, 1994. with which the most important public service media were dominated by it. This purge was later referred to by the opposition media as the " Night of the Long Knives " (Slovak: Noc dlhých nožov ).

The Mečiar government began to take a tough course to consolidate its power, with the main target of the government's attacks being President Michal Kováč , who had already criticized Mečiar's previous government in March 1994. Several powers have been withdrawn from the President, including: B. the right to appoint the head of the Slovak secret service SIS (Slovak: Slovenská informačná služba ), with the government increasingly trying to persuade the president to resign.

His great role model was Franz Josef Strauss , he explained in 1994.

Mečiar was also accused of participating in the kidnapping of President Michal Kováč's son in August 1995 (which could not be proven later). People close to his party are said to have enriched themselves through the privatization . On May 3, 1995, the Committee for the Protection of Journalists ranked Mečiar tenth among the world's greatest "enemies of press freedom".

Accession of Slovakia to the European Union and NATO seemed unthinkable at this time, although Mečiar himself always tried to achieve this. In terms of foreign policy, he sought the best possible relationship with Russia and its President Boris Yeltsin . In 1995 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Lomonosov University in Moscow for "his outstanding contribution to the further development of Slovak-Russian relations" . In Moscow on October 30, 1995, Mečiar expressed himself very positively about Russian policy towards Slovakia when he stated that “Russia does not forbid Slovakia anything and does not order anything.” On November 10, 1995, during a European forum in Berlin, he again criticized that “the EU is stylized towards Slovakia in the role of a democracy teacher who has the right to give behavioral grades.” The US investor George Soros , together with Slobodan Milošević and Leonid Kravchuk, described Mečiar as one of the region's dangerous nationalists. The French weekly newspaper "L`Evenement du jeudi" counted Mečiar to a group of 18 "democratic dictators". B. Slobodan Milošević, Franjo Tuđman , Alija Izetbegović and Aljaksandr Lukashenka were counted.

Since Mečiar's re-election in 1994, there have been repeated conflicts with the Hungarian minority. The representatives of the Slovak Hungarians criticized the fact that the new government reduced funding for minorities in the cultural and school sectors. The fact that Ján Slota's nationalist Slovak National Party was part of the governing coalition also made Hungarians uncomfortable. In bilingual schools of the Hungarian minority, according to a government regulation, the annual school reports of the students had to be issued in the purely Slovak version.

In 1998 there was another major clean-up after the term of office of President Kováč expired and the members of parliament were unable to agree on a new president. For the time being, Mečiar was also given the powers of the President and immediately replaced half of all Slovak ambassadors abroad with their own candidates. Although his party won both the October 1998 and 2002 elections, due to his bad reputation abroad he was unable to find a coalition partner, so that the former opposition under Mikuláš Dzurinda came to power after both elections .

Opposition leader (1998-2006)

1999 presidential election

As an opposition politician, Mečiar ran for the office of president in May 1999 , trying to profit from the large gap between the Slovak government's attitude and popular opinion on the Kosovo war . While the Dzurinda government supported the bombing of Yugoslavia in its endeavor to join NATO as soon as possible, 3/4 of the Slovak population rejected it. Mečiar also invited the Yugoslav President Milošević on a hunting expedition to Slovakia as part of his election campaign. In the first ballot, Mečiar achieved 27.81% and thus came first, but he lost in the runoff election with 42.81% against Rudolf Schuster .

Arrested in 2000

On April 20, 2000, Mečiar was arrested by the police during a raid on his villa in Trenčianske Teplice . He was accused of having wrongly granted high bonuses to ministers during his period in office from 1994 to 1998. After a brief interrogation at the police station, Mečiar was released and immediately cheered by supporters.

2004 presidential elections

For the 2004 presidential elections he was re-elected and during the election campaign he repeatedly stressed that he had changed his behavior. In the first ballot on April 3, 2004, according to the opinion polls, he achieved a very good result and came in first place with 32.73%. In the runoff election on April 17, however, he lost 40% to 60% of the votes against his former colleague Ivan Gašparovič .

Government participation (2006-2010)

After the parliamentary elections in 2006, Mečiar formed a coalition with the SMER party and the Slovak National Party, thus enabling the formation of a government under Robert Fico ( see government Robert Fico I ). In this, Mečiars ĽS-HZDS held two ministerial posts. Mečiar himself did not receive a ministerial post, but was part of a so-called “coalition council” to which the party leaders of the three parties belonged. In January 2007, Mečiar underwent heart surgery in Banská Bystrica , which he survived well.

Situation since 2010

In the parliamentary elections in 2010 , his party only managed to get 4.32% of the vote and thus missed a re-entry into parliament. Slovak newspapers commented on the failed re-entry of the ĽS-HZDS into parliament as the end of the Mečiar era and the end of Mečiarism . However, Mečiar stated that he would stay in politics even after the election defeat and predicted a victory for his party in the 2014 parliamentary elections. Next led Mečiar, he then formed a coalition with which SMER of Robert Fico wish. After the overthrow of Iveta Radičová's government in October 2011, Mečiar announced that he would no longer serve as his party's top candidate in the early parliamentary elections in March 2012, but that he would remain party chairman. On December 3, 2011, Mečiar announced that if his party fails to get back into parliament in the early parliamentary elections in March 2012, he and the entire leadership of the party will resign from their partisan offices. However, he ruled out an end to his party as such. After the poor performance (less than 1% of the vote) in the early parliamentary elections in Slovakia in 2012 , Mečiar announced his resignation on April 26, 2012 and shortly thereafter also terminated his party membership. The party disbanded in January 2014.

According to a survey in 2011, Mečiar was judged more controversially in Slovakia than the president of the first Slovak state, Jozef Tiso , who headed a fascist one-party dictatorship from 1940 to 1944.

Awards

literature

Literature in German

  • Simon Gruber: Wild East or Heart of Europe? Slovakia as an EU candidate country in the 1990s. V&R Unipress, 2010, ISBN 978-3-89971-599-6
  • Hannes Hofbauer, David X. Noack: Slovakia. The arduous way to the west. Promedia Verlag, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-85371-349-5
  • Michael Holländer: Lines of conflict and configuration of the party systems in East Central Europe 1988-2002. Books on Demand 2003
  • Roland Schönfeld: Slovakia: From the Middle Ages to the Present Pustet Verlag, Regensburg 2000, ISBN 978-3-79171-723-4
  • Christoph Thanei: Vladimír Mečiar: A myth polarized (Slovakia). In: Michael Jungwirth: Haider, Le Pen & Co: Europe's right-wing populists. Steyer 2002, ISBN 978-3-22212-999-5

Literature in Slovak

  • Milan Stanislav Ďurica : Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov v časovej následnosti faktov dvoch tisícročí (History of Slovakia and the Slovaks in a chronological sequence of facts from two millennia). Lúč, Bratislava 2007, ISBN 978-80-7114-610-0
  • Vlado Haratík, Ivan Lexa: Únos (The Abduction). Tatramedial, 2004
  • Vlado Haratík, Ivan Lexa: Biskupov triptych (The Bishop's Triptych). EU Press, 2006
  • Dušan Kováč: Dejiny Slovenska. (History of Slovakia). Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 2000, ISBN 978-8071066354
  • Michal Kováč: Pamäti. Môj príbeh občana a prezidenta (Memories. My story as a citizen and president). Milanium, 2010
  • Ľuba Lesná: Únos demokracie: zo zákulisia slovenskej tajnej služby (kidnapping of democracy: from the backstage of the Slovak secret service). G plus G, Bratislava / Prague 2001, ISBN 80-88935-20-2
  • Marián Leško: Mečiar a mečiarizmus: politik bez škrupúĺ, politik bez zabrán (Mečiar and Mečiarism: a politician without scruples, a politician without inhibitions). VMV, Bratislava 1996.
  • Vladimír Mečiar, Dana Podracká, Ľuba Šajdová: Vladimír Mečiar. Slovenské tabu (Vladimír Mečiar. A Slovak taboo). Silentium, 2001.
  • Vladimír Mečiar: Slovensko, dôveruj si (Slovakia, believe in yourself!). R-Press Verlag, Bratislava 1998, ISBN 80-968022-7-5
  • Vladimír Mečiar: Otázky o NATO (Questions about NATO). Crocus, 2003
  • Eva Petrášová: Prípad Mečiar: Ako to bolo naozaj? (The Mečiar case: how was it really?). Cesty, 1991

Re-used newspaper articles and interviews

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hannes Hofbauer, David X. Noack: Slovakia: The laborious way to the west , p. 71
  2. ↑ Marián Leško: Mečiar a mečiarizmus , p 56
  3. ^ Slovak virtues . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , accessed on October 17, 2011
  4. ↑ Dušan Kováč: Dejiny Slovenska. (History of Slovakia). Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 2000, p. 321
  5. ↑ a b Dušan Kováč: Dejiny Slovenska. (History of Slovakia). Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 2000, pp. 332 and 333
  6. ↑ Milan S. Ďurica: Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov v časovej následnosti faktov dvoch tisícročí , Lúč Verlag, Bratislava 2007, p. 736.
  7. ^ Karl-Peter Schwarz: Always good for a surprise , in: Die Presse, July 12, 1994.
  8. ^ CPJ Names Ten Worst "Enemies of the Press" on World Press Freedom Day. In: www.cpj.org , accessed January 12, 2014
  9. ↑ a b c Milan S. Ďurica: Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov v časovej následnosti faktov dvoch tisícročí , Lúč Verlag, Bratislava 2007, pp. 744 and 745.
  10. ↑ Vladimír Mečiar: Slovensko, dôveruj si! R-Press Verlag, Bratislava 1998, p. 33. ISBN 80-968022-7-5
  11. ↑ Čarnogurský s označením Mečiara za "Demokratického" diktátora súhlasí , on SME.sk, accessed on November 14, 2011
  12. ↑ Dušan Kováč: Dejiny Slovenska. (History of Slovakia). Nakladatelství Lidové noviny, Prague 2000, pp. 330-331
  13. ↑ Milan S. Ďurica: Dejiny Slovenska a Slovákov v časovej následnosti faktov dvoch tisícročí. Lúč Verlag, Bratislava 2007, pp. 762 and 763
  14. ↑ Jakop Juchler: Greetings from Kosovo. In: WOZ Die Wochenzeitung , June 3, 1999.
  15. ↑ Former Prime Minister Meciar arrested on Spiegel Online , April 20, 2000, accessed on March 5, 2014
  16. ↑ Coalition of Extremes to rule Slovakia on Spiegel Online , July 2, 2006, accessed on March 5, 2014
  17. ↑ Mečiarovi na 41 minút zastavili srdce on SME.sk, accessed on October 7, 2012 (Slovak)
  18. ↑ Mečiarova éra v slovenskej politike sa skončila , on SME.sk, June 6, 2010, accessed on July 9, 2011 (Slovak)
  19. ↑ Koniec mečiarizmu na Slovensku: Zbohom, Vlado! dated June 13, 2010, accessed on July 9, 2011 (Slovak)
  20. ↑ Vladimír Mečiar: V politike som klamal len raz on spravy.pravda.sk, June 9, 2010 (Slovak)
  21. ↑ Mečiar plánuje návrat do parlamentu. on SME.sk, accessed October 24, 2011 (Slovak)
  22. ↑ www.webnoviny.sk: Ak ĽS-HZDS voľbách neuspeje, Mečiar odstúpi. , accessed on December 14, 2011 (Slovak)
  23. ↑ HZDS si zrejme do leta nového predsedu nezvolí , on SME.sk, accessed on May 16, 2012 (Slovak)
  24. ↑ Kontroverznejší ako Jozef Tiso? Vladimír Mečiar on HNonline.sk, accessed December 8, 2011 (Slovak)
personal data
SURNAME Mečiar, Vladimír
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Slovak politician, lawyer and amateur boxer
DATE OF BIRTH July 26, 1942
PLACE OF BIRTH Zvolen , Slovakia