The government of Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger formally resigned on Friday following the motion of censure passed against him on Thursday, although he will remain in office until new elections are held in the country, at best early next year and provided that a constitutional amendment to allow them to be held comes to fruition.
In view of Thursday’s defeat of the minority coalition government and the unwillingness, in the words of the country’s president, Zuzana Caputova, of the other political forces to form an executive with a parliamentary majority, the president has asked Heger to act as a provisional government «in favor of stability».
The president refrained from making further statements, in view of her well-known criticism of the Hager government, an executive without a raison d’être, according to the opposition, in view of its inability to deal effectively with the energy crisis, inflation, the increase in poverty and the massive arrival of Ukrainian refugees.
«I already anticipated in my November speech the drama that we witnessed during the last minutes of his government,» added the president in statements to the media collected by the portal ‘The Slovak Spectator’.
The country’s political forces had already discussed the possibility of calling these early elections in September next year, half a year before the regular elections, scheduled for 2024. The country’s president does not want to wait that long.
There is the problem that Slovakia’s Constitution does not allow for early elections, but the Supreme Court has raised the option of amending the Magna Carta with the approval of a three-fifths majority of 90 members of Parliament.
The scenario of early elections would benefit the left-wing opposition led by the Smer Social Democrats, whose leader Robert Fico has been prime minister three times, and Hlas, according to the polls.
