Ministers of the fourth government of Robert Fico (Smer-SD) in the first year, they replaced up to 55% of senior positions in departmental organizations, enterprises and companies. While in departments led by nominees of the Hlas-SD party every other director had to leave, the ministers for Smer-SD exchanged three quarters of them. Minister of the Environment Tomáš Taraba (SNS nominee) replaced up to 90% of them. This follows from the findings of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International Slovakia (TIS).
According to TIS, the exchanges were more intense than in the case of the previous government of Igor Matovič (Movement Slovakia, formerly OĽANO), which replaced only 42% of top managers in the first year of government.
According to TIS findings, the coalition “recast” in the first year of the government up to 119 out of a total of 216 directors of departmental contribution and budget organizations, heads of the largest state-owned enterprises and stock companies. During the comparable period, Matovič’s government replaced 90 out of a total of 212 directors.
According to TIS, it is due to the avalanche of exchanges launched by the current government characteristic non-transparency, since it abandoned the practice of open tendering procedures, which her predecessor tried to introduce in part.
Half of the directorships reassigned ministers for the Hlas-SD party, under whose departments nominally the largest number of organizations and companies fall – up to 90 (they changed 47 director positions, 52%). In the Ministry of Health, Hlas replaced more than half of the directors (28 out of a total of 48), for comparison OĽANO in Matovič’s government, only 17 posts were filled in this department in the first year (out of a total of 47 at the time).
The largest managerial change was brought about by the Smer-SD party, which dismissed three-quarters of the top bosses (42 out of a total of 56, i.e. 75%).
At SNS, according to TIS, there is also a problem with the expertise of new managers. The Minister of the Environment has already managed to change 19 out of a total of 21 directors (up to 90%) and only the posts of heads of national parks Slovenský raj and Pieniny remained unfilled. At the same time, Taraba filled several positions directly with functionaries of the SNS and Život parties.
The Minister of Culture, Martina Šimkovičová, also launched personnel changes, but apparently also due to the problem of finding its own nominees, it has so far replaced only nine of the 32 directors (28%). This is a similar ratio to that of her predecessor Natália Milanová (OĽANO).
TIS underlined that the low transparency of exchanges is problematic. Ministries currently not only do not offer on their websites minutes from completed selection procedures, but often do not even provide any information about them.
Transparency added that the pace of change the current government set caught up with Robert Fico’s first and second governments and is slightly behind only Iveta Radičová’s cabinet (65% of exchanges). In the case of Igor Matovič’s government, every second person ended up in the top management of state-owned companies in the first year. While the average “lifetime” of the top boss in a hundred selected private companies reaches 5.4 years over the entire period of their existence, for the 45 largest state-owned companies, it is only 2.1 years on average.
