The governing party in Slovakia, Smer, will not introduce their presidential candidate this year. According to information the
SITA newswire has obtained, the party will only present its candidate
after the Speaker of Parliament Pavol Paška has announced the date of presidential elections.
Since the elections should be held in April – before Easter – Paška has time until January to announce the date for the elections. Originally, Smer planned to announce the party’s presidential candidate on December 7 at their congress in Nitra. Until then, Smer will carry out several internal opinion polls which it wants to thoroughly analyse. Prime Minister Robert
Fico is frequently mentioned as a potential Smer candidate, but he has not yet told the party whether he has decided to run, SITA wrote.
Several Smer politicians have emphasised that the party cannot afford to lose in the presidential elections, regardless of whether Fico or someone else is their candidate. A nomination for presidential candidacy requires 15 signatures of MPs or 15,000 signatures from citizens under a petition to that sense.
Pavol Hrušovský (Christian-Democratic Movement-KDH and Most-Híd nominee) will run against independent candidate Radoslav Procházka, entrepreneur and philanthropist Andrej Kiska and ex-KDH chairman Ján Čarnogurský (now running independently). Other people who have announced their candidacy include MP Peter Osuský (Freedom and Solidarity-SaS), civic candidates Leonid Chovanec, Jozef Behýl, Milan Melník, Ľubica Blašková and Rimavska Sobota Mayor Jozef Šimko. Last week, actor and former politician Milan Kňažko also announced his candidacy, the TASR newswire wrote.
(Source: SITA, TASR)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
