CTK
Updated 43 minutes ago
Diplomat Miroslav Wlachovský will be the foreign minister in the Slovak caretaker government of the future prime minister and current vice-governor of the central bank Ľudovít Ódor. The list of members of the cabinet of experts was published on Friday by the presidential office of Zuzana Čaputová, who will appoint the government on Monday. The caretaker government, the first of its kind in the country’s modern history, is expected to lead the country to early parliamentary elections in September.
Wlachovský was the Slovak ambassador to Britain and Denmark, and now he is an adviser to outgoing Prime Minister Eduard Heger, whose minority government was voted no-confidence in the lower house last December. The Ministry of Finance will be led by the current Chief Economist of the Central Bank, Michal Horváth. Silvia Hroncová, the former director of the National Theater Opera and the State Opera in the Czech Republic, will be the Minister of Culture.
Some other well-known personalities will also occupy positions in the official government. For example, the Minister of the Interior will be Ivan Šimko, who already held this position in 2001 and 2002 and was later the Minister of Defense. Chief Slovak veterinarian Jozef Bíreš will become Minister of Agriculture. Former judge and ombudsman Jana Dubovcová will manage the Ministry of Justice.
The President appoints Pavol Lančarič, the former head of the leading telecommunications operator Orange Slovakia, as Minister of Transport. The Ministries of Health and Social Affairs will be led by their current state secretaries (deputies) as ministers. There will be four women in the 16-member cabinet. Among them is the Deputy Prime Minister for the recovery plan, Lívia Vašáková, who has been in charge of this agenda at the government office until now.
“I appreciate that Mrs. President has chosen people for the caretaker government who can continue the good things that our government has done – it is mainly about continuing the reforms from the recovery plan and help in times of inflation and the energy crisis,” Heger said in a statement.
It is not yet clear whether the caretaker government will receive the confidence of the House, which it must ask for within 30 days of its appointment. So far, only the liberal Svoboda a Solidarita party has promised to support the new government. On the contrary, the Direction-social democracy of former three-time prime minister Robert Fico and the Voice-social democracy of ex-prime minister Peter Pellegrini intend to vote against the new government in the lower house.
Heger’s cabinet ends after the case regarding the granting of a state subsidy to the company of Agriculture Minister Samuel Vlčan, who then made his position available last week. Subsequently, the head of diplomacy Rastislav Káčer also resigned. After the previous departures of the health and finance ministers, this would mean that Heger’s government would lose its fourth minister without the possibility of a full replacement since its fall. New members cannot be appointed to the dismissed government.
