Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), the smallest opposition party in parliament, is nominating one of its MPs, Peter Osuský, to run for president next spring, party chairman Richard Sulík said on June 12, as reported by the SITA newswire. Osuský has been cited as a possible candidate in the run up to previous presidential elections.
Osuský, a doctor by education, is a former Civic Conservative Party (OKS) member and former deputy rector of Comenius University in Bratislava. He has been a member of numerous political parties and movements: he first entered parliament as a Democratic Party (DS) MP on the SDK slate in 1998, but left in 2001 to found the OKS – which failed to make it into parliament in 2002 or 2006. In 2010, he was elected on the Most-Híd election slate. However, his refusal to support increased guarantees for the EU bailout fund in 2011 meant he was not offered a spot on the party’s 2012 election slate, and so ran for SaS, the Hospodárske Noviny daily wrote.
“We are sure that he will not disappoint,” Sulík said, adding that his party had in the past tried to agree a joint candidate to represent the political right with the People’s Platform (which combines the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH), Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (SDKÚ), and Most-Híd), but that the effort had been in vain. Sulík said Osuský is a potential president whom citizens could be proud of and added that SaS would seek the support of other political parties for his bid.
Meanwhile, a poll by the MVK agency showed that over 60 percent of Smer supporters support a presidential bid by current Prime Minister Robert Fico. The poll, whose results were published on June 10, found that when asked whether they would vote for the incumbent premier or not in a presidential election, 60.6 percent of Smer supporters responded "Yes, certainly", while 36 percent of them said that they would rather see Fico continue as prime minister. The remaining 3.4 percent were undecided. In addition, 12.2 percent of respondents who said that they were not Smer supporters said they would give their vote to Fico. The poll was conducted on a sample of 1,085 respondents between May 8 and 15.
Sources: SITA, Hospodárske Noviny
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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