DESPITE an earlier promise to give the largest opposition party, the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the opportunity to nominate a candidate to head Slovakia’s Public Procurement Office (ÚVO), Prime Minister Robert Fico decided to make the choice himself, saying that the opposition parties had failed to reach a decision in a timely manner.
Fico named Zita Táborská to head the office. She was also a candidate when the previous government was in power. The prime minister said he did not want his government to give the impression that it wanted “to fill the position with its own person”, as quoted by the SITA newswire.
“I cannot imagine a stronger opposition candidate,” Fico stated, as quoted by SITA.
The Slovak parliament is expected to approve the nominee at its next session in June.
Fico said he expects Táborská to refresh the work of the procurement office and added that she and Robert Kaliňák, the deputy prime minister and interior minister, would draft a good bill on public procurement to send to parliament.
Táborská previously served in a senior post at ÚVO from 2000 to 2004.
Fico said he repeatedly tried to determine if an agreement had been reached between the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), the leading opposition party, and representatives of the Union of Towns and Villages of Slovakia (ZMOS) and the Union of Employers (RÚZ).
Fico had said that a candidate proposed by the KDH for the ÚVO post must have the approval of these two organisations and that he had received repeated requests to postpone the deadline for an agreement and decided to wait no longer to choose a new chief for ÚVO.
