SNS leader and Deputy Speaker of Parliament Andrej Danko with state secretary at the Sports Ministry Jan Krisanda at Slovakia's first match. (source: Instagram profile of Andrej Danko)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Everybody wants to see Slovakia playing at the Euros. Only Pellegrini now stands between RTVS and STVR. There was no pandemic in Slovakia, says anti-vaxxer-turned-government proxy, provoking outrage.
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Slovakia fields an over-strength official team at the Euros
“More than a hundred million euros will go into sport. Don’t let anyone tell me that it makes no sense,” Andrej Danko wrote on Facebook under a selfie that showed him celebrating the Slovak national football team’s victory over Belgium in its first match at the ongoing European football championships (that’s soccer, if you’re reading this from across the Atlantic).
Danko is a deputy speaker of parliament, and aspires to become speaker if and when the coalition gets around to deciding on what to do about the vacancy left by Peter Pellegrini’s elevation to the presidency. He is also the leader of the Slovak National Party (SNS), which controls the newly-created Ministry of Sport. When the Slovak team won against the match favourite, Belgium, Danko decided this was precisely the justification he needed to shore up the ministry’s disputed existence (it is widely regarded as having been created solely to give his party another seat in the government).
Apparently, the SNS leader had a pressing engagement in Germany, where the match was being played, and so, happily, was able to witness it in person – from the VIP section, naturally. Nor was he alone. His party nominee, the new minister of sport, Dušan Keketi, was there too. Unlike Danko and half a dozen other government officials, however, poor Keketi had to slum it, flying on a regular commercial flight to Frankfurt. By contrast, Danko and his fellow coalition politicians – namely Peter Žiga (another deputy speaker), Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok, Education Minister Tomáš Drucker and Labour Minister Erik Tomáš, all from the Hlas party – travelled on a government jet, an Airbus A319. Bratislava Regional Governor Juraj Droba took the plane with them, too. And those are just the ones we know about.
