The vice president of the National Council of the Slovak Republic, entrusted with its management, considers the most important events that took place in Slovakia in the past year Peter Žiga (Voice-SD) the assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD), the election of Petr Pellegrini as President of the Slovak Republic and the approval of the consolidation package. He stated this in an interview for TASR.
Žiga reminded that the presidential elections in the spring brought the victory of a political president. “Peter Pellegrini won and it happened after ten years, after the period of President Andrej Kiska and President Zuzana Čaputová political president again,” he told TASR. He considers Kiska and Čaputová to be presidents who were generated by civil rather than political society.
“President Pellegrini will now perceive politics from the presidential palace as a political president. Has sufficient experience has been in politics for more than 20 yearswhich means that the influence of the presidential palace on political events within Slovak politics will be completely different, as it was with the previous two presidents. And he will be a good president” added Žiga. According to him, it is an event that will affect Slovakia for years to comebecause he assumes that Pellegrini will want to defend his mandate after five years.
“The biggest political thing that happened in 2024 was the assassination of the prime minister,” stated the vice-chairman of the NR SR, saying that it was an unprecedented event that should never have happened. “The personal animosities of some frustrated people have gone to the point that they used violence against the third highest constitutional official in Slovakiaand this significantly influenced political events in Slovakia,” he declared.
Approval of the consolidation package and the state budget for 2025 is, according to Žigu, another fundamental thing. He says he’s going about the reaction to the previous three years of the governments of Igor Matovič, Eduard Heger and Ľudovít Ódor.
“It’s definitely not very positive to raise taxes, it’s not positive to cut spending. You have to deal with it in some way,” he noted. However, according to him, the current government has also adopted measures to mitigate the impact of consolidation, for example the impact of increasing VAT.
