After a long two-day debate – including a racist explanatory speech – the SNC finally voted on the government and government program of Prime Minister Lajos Odor (Udovit Odor), appointed a month earlier.
According to the Slovak constitution, the parliament must vote on the prime minister and his program no later than 30 days after his appointment. Adores was very willing to vote: in recent weeks, they have met with the leaders of the parliamentary parties several times in order to create a charming majority of 76 out of 150 deputies.
As we reported, according to Adur, the negotiations were in a good mood, even with Robert Fico, the social populist, who is his regular employee, but at the same time this did not change anything: among the 134 representatives present
The Slovak National Council did not give confidence to Adur’s government and its program with a majority of 34 yes and 43 no, with 54 abstentions and 5 no votes.
By the way, it was expected that Parliament would not give him a vote of confidence – even the Prime Minister himself said this at the beginning of June. Before the vote, the only 20-member faction of the libertarian SaS and the only representative of center-right liberal-progressive Slovakia promised to vote yes to the government program, while the new party of twice-failed Prime Minister Edvard Heger, made up of OĽaNO separatists, the Democrats, never really revealed their cards. Sme rodina led by Boris Kolar even flirted with a vote of confidence, but in the end the right-wing populist party decided to abstain.
Robert Fico’s Smer announced in advance that he was not willing to support the government in any way, as Peter Pellegrini’s Hlas-SD, which was formed from Smer’s separatists, declared in advance that he would not vote for a vote of confidence. However, on some issues – for example, EU money owed to Slovakia – it will support the government.
OĽaNO, led by Igor Matović, who has made the work of the Slovak government impossible for the past three years with his ad hoc decisions and statements, also kept his promise. The support of the deceased Prime Minister and Minister of Finance was associated with the support of the deputies for their proposal that Slovaks who vote in the elections of September 30 should receive a one-time payment of 500 euros, and that the state government should too. Maintaining the Matović family support system. Matović repeated this during the debate, to which only Odur replied: The party leader had been in politics long enough to know that his demands could not be met.
What will come next?
After Parliament did not give confidence to Odoric, this means that the ball is back in the hands of the President of the Republic, Zuzana Caputova: the Slovak head of state can once again try to form a new government of officials, which, after its formation, the Council of Ministers will again have a month to develop a government program and then assemble it behind Parliamentary majority.
At the same time, this is not very likely, since the manners have already begun to rule in the last month, and the current rather hectic political life in Slovakia will not be helped by the uncertainty associated with the formation of another government.
Thus, Caputova is likely to ask Ador again, only this time as acting prime minister, who will lead the country until early elections on September 30, with a reduced mandate.
(Cover photo: Lagos Odur. Photo: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg/Getty Images)
