Richard Sulík (SaS), Igor Matovič (OĽaNO), President Zuzana Čaputová, Veronika Remišová (Za Ľudí) and Boris Kollár (Sme Rodina), from left. (source: TASR)
Representatives of four parties of the future ruling coalition, OĽaNO, Sme Rodina, Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), and Za Ľudí, met with President Zuzana Čaputová on Saturday, March 14, to inform her of post nominations of the future government. They concluded talks over their distribution on Friday night. The talks lasted only 13 days; Igor Matovič, leader of the winning party OĽaNO, admitted that reaching the agreement was prompted by the escalating epidemiologic situation in Slovakia caused by the outbreak of the Covid-19 coronavirus.
>>> Read more about Slovakia's election results and subsequent coalition talks here.
“With President Zuzana Čaputová, we went through individual nominations,” said Matovič, who was assigned to form the new government, adding that their ambition is to make Slovakia a country in which the law applies to everyone.
The four parties agreed on the distribution of posts in the cabinet at a ratio of 8:3:3:2. The future coalition will hold 95 seats in the 150-member parliament and thus hold a constitutional majority.
The parties have not revealed concrete names of nominees, except the post of the economy minister, giving time to the president to get acquainted with them. Also, for some posts there are still multiple nominees. The next meeting with the president will take place on Monday, March 16.
The final agreement came after a crisis in communication between Matovič and SaS leader Richard Sulík who clashed over the post of the finance minister. In the end, the prime-ministerial party, OĽaNO, will get the post of the finance minister. SaS gave up this post in exchange of not getting two but three ministerial posts including the economy minister.
