Peter Pellegrini and his fellow Smer renegades, Bratislava, June 17, 2020. (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
Former Smer election slate leader Peter Pellegrini, who recently announced he was leaving the party he had made his career in, has announced he is founding a new party, on June 17, 2020. He wants to have the party up and running by September, he said, to be "the new face of social democracy in Slovakia".
Pellegrini, who holds the highest parliamentary post given to the opposition after the election, deputy parliament's speaker, is joined by 10 more MPs from the Smer caucus in his new endeavour. Most of them are prominent Smer politicians: former interior minister Denisa Saková, former deputy PM for informatisation Richard Raši, former economy minister Peter Žiga, former culture minister Ľubica Laššáková, and MPs Erik Tomáš, Matúš Šutaj-Eštok, Ján Ferenčák, Peter Kmec, Róbert Puci and Ján Blcháč.
