Press Digest

He wants to be back in 2000

The chairman of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia [Vladimír Mečiar] has built his election campaign on propaganda from all the successes he has enjoyed, but he knows very well what state the country is in. That is why he is saying that the country will not survive without the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia for even two years. His colleague Gašparovič said in an interview for [the Austrian state press agency] APA that he "does not rule out" the possibility that the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia will end up in opposition, even if it wins the elections. It seems that Vladimír Mečiar has completed his "business plan": He is relying on the fact that he will profit from the problems which he has caused in this country. If his plan works, in 2000 he will rule Slovakia again. Or what is left of the country.
Marián Leško, Sme, September 19, 1998

Liverpool, not even Mečiar

Football players from the well known Liverpool club should not feel sad that even their fame was not able to attract more spectators last week to the stadium of the Košice-based Lokomotíva [football club]. On the last day of the week, the star of Slovak politics came to the stadium, with a great advertising splash beforehand and accompanied by the star of French movies, Gerard Depardieu, and the seats were occupied by fewer people than watched Liverpool.
Ján Dulín, Pravda, September 21, 1998

Empty tires

Just like putting sugar in the gas tank of a car, the opposition is trying to discredit everything that the government of Vladimír Mečiar has been able to do, things that the disunited Slovak Democratic Coalition with the whole spectrum of the opposition was not able to come up with it. This applies also to the Slovak highway network, a part of the infrastructure monument of this government, which can not be taken away from the government by anyone.
Margita Ivaničková, Slovenská Republika, September 21, 1998

Everybody in Slovakia has a right to participate in the government. Those who did not want to thereby chose the position they are in today. In four years they could have done a lot of good things. But instead of that they presented small problems, and if there were none, they made them up.


Compiled by Dobroslava Krajčovičova from the statements of Vladimír Mečiar

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