Zuzana Dolinková (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Tax hikes and other consolidation measures sail through parliament. Health Minister Zuzana Dolinková announces her resignation, but the government proxy who wants to ban vaccines is still in post.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Health minister steps down, citing spending cuts
Robert Fico thanked Zuzana Dolinková for her work as minister, but did not see her Friday morning resignation as enough of a reason to make a public appearance or comment on either her decision or the future of one of the government's most afflicted, but important, departments.
In fact, to the reasons Dolinková gave for her departure, he literally said “no comment” in an official statement sent to journalists before midday on Friday.
Dolinková spent a half-hour briefing – which ended without journalists getting to ask any questions – listing the people she blamed for the state of the department she has led for nearly a year (her predecessor and the opposition, mostly), and then her achievements (which she made sound much grander than they actually were). In the end, she basically said that she did not get enough money from the state budget to run the health-care system in Slovakia with all the problems it is in (which she added will not be helped by the recently passed consolidation package) and that she could no longer deal with people like the government proxy for investigating the pandemic management, the notorious conspiracy theorist and SNS MP Peter Kotlár.
Dolinková is the first minister in the fourth government of Robert Fico to resign, but her resignation does not come as a surprise. The attitude that Fico gave in his official statement is a pars pro toto of their relationship. When Dolinková quit Smer for Hlas, which is now in coalition with Fico, the Smer leader labelled her and her fellow defectors “traitors”. She was introduced to politics by Tomáš Drucker – the current education minister and head of what is sometimes called the liberal wing of Hlas – and advanced by Peter Pellegrini as one of the prominent faces of the party. She and Fico have reportedly never seen eye to eye, and when the junior coalition member the Slovak National Party (SNS) added its voice to opposition calls for her resignation, Fico gave her a less-than-ringing endorsement by commenting that if she did not manage the health-care sector, someone else would.
