Vladimír Mečiar

Vladimír Meciar (born 26 July 1942) is a Slovak politician who served as Prime Minister of Slovakia, from 1990 to 1991, from 1992 to 1994 and from 1994 to 1998. He was the leader of the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (ĽS-HZDS). Mečiar led Slovakia during the dissolution of Czechoslovakia in 1992-93 and was one of the leading presidential candidates in Slovakia in 1999 and 2004. He has been criticized by his opponents as Western political organizations for having an autocratic style of administration his Mečiarizmus (Mečiarizmus, Mečiarizmus). Contents

1 Czechoslovakia 2 Dissolution of Czechoslovakia 3 Slovakia

Czechoslovakia

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Mečiar was born in Detva 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 they have three 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 anti-Communist Velvet Revolution, he joined the new political party, Public Against Violence (Verejnosť proti násiliu, VPN), which was the Czech 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 as Minister of the Interior and Environment of Slovakia on a recommendation of Alexander Dubček, who was impressed by Mečiar's thorough knowledge in all falling fields. [1]

After the first democratic elections in Czechoslovakia in June 1990, he was named Slovak premier minister (representing the VPN) of the 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 started distancing themselves from him. March 1991: Mečiar supporters (mostly members of his cabinet) and Mečiar opponents (led by VPN chairman Fedor Gál). On 23 April 1991, the Presidium of the Slovak Parliament (Slovak National Council) was deposed first by Slovakia and 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

In 1991 and 1992, there were frequent, but fruitless, negotiations between the Czech Republic and the Slovak Republic concerning the future relations between the two republics of Czechoslovakia. The winners of the June 1992 elections in Czechoslovakia and new prime ministers were the Civic Democratic Party by Václav Klaus in the Czech Republic and the HZDS led by Vladimír Mečiar in Slovakia. HZDS supported the creation of a federation-a confederation-between the two republics. [2] However, its Czech counterpart wanted to be more centralized Czechoslovakia than was the case in 1992. [citation needed] Since these two concepts have been irreconcilable, Mečiar and Klaus agreed on 23 July in Bratislava to dissolve Czechoslovakia and to create two independent states. As a result, Mečiar and Klaus became the prime ministers of the independent states on 1 January 1993. Mečiar also opposed the free-market shock therapy proposed by Czechoslovakia.

Slovakia

After eight members of the parliament left 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 appointed 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 1994, in which he won 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 colorful 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 and the shady privatization of national companies that occurred during his rule. Privatization during the 1990s in both Slovakia and the Czech Republic was widely disseminated by the Unilateral Asset Stripping (also described by the Journalistic Term of Tunneling).

At the same time Mečiar was at permanent "war" with the President of Slovakia, Michal Kováč. He was also blamed for being with the Slovak secret service (SIS) in the abduction of the President's 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. [4] However, after Kovač's term expired in March 1998 the Slovak parliament was unable to elect a successor, so Mečiar also assumed the role of acting president. As president, he has been appointed for some of those accused of the abduction. As a result, Slovakia under the rule of becoming a member of the West and the region of the European Union and NATO accession negotiations both organizations.

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, that we do not want to be independent." 5]

In 2000, Mečiar was arrested by Slovakian police on charges of fraud dating from his term in office. [6] [7]

Mečiar was highly favored to win the 2002 election, even though it was thought that it would become prime minister again, it would be 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 HZDS members to leave the party. Some of them created the HZD (Movement for Democracy) 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 long-standing ally Ivan Gašparovič. In 2006, HZDS suffered the worst election result in its history (8.79%), leading to a request for examination of the election results. [8] 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.

In the 2010 parliamentary election, Mečiar's HZDS saw its vote drop to 4%, leaving it shut out of parliament for the first time in its history. In the 2012 elections, the vote is 0.93%, leaving it again outside of parliament. The party was dissolved in 2014.