The governing coalition HZDS party, at a meeting in Bardejovské Kupele on March 28, recommended that its supporters should not vote for either of the candidates in the second round of the presidential election on April 4, reported the TASR newswire.
“The demanding criteria we set for our presidential candidate Professor Milan Melník in the first round have influenced us to not lower the bar in the second round,” said HZDS chairman Vladimír Mečiar after the session.
“Now, the affair is only a matter of SDKÚ, (the ethnic Hungarian) SMK and KDH (the Christian Democrats) on one side and Smer-SD (the main governing party) on the other side,” said Mečiar.
According to Mečiar, HZDS has maintained its critical stance towards incumbent President Ivan Gašparovič.
“I've no personal dispute with him, I simply don't identify with anyone without a backbone,” he said, at the same time accusing the president of striving for the fall of his government in 1994.
In reaction to Gašparovič's statements that neither he, nor his family have ever been clients of now-bankrupt non-banking institutions, Mečiar said for TASR that he won't present any evidence regarding this matter for the time being. “It isn't my task to refute these statements and to help (opposition candidate) Iveta Radičová. Let the matter between them resolve itself. The time for other matters will come soon enough,” he added. TASR
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
