Theater and film actress, sociologist, politician and former diplomat Magdalena Vášáryová (77) in the new book Before I Disappear, he describes the Central European area in an original, colorful way and brings a lot of surprising views and not fully known facts from recent history or behind the scenes of politics. During they pulled out several incidents from the publication, and one of them also concerned the former prime minister of the SR Vladimír Mečiar (83).
“He called me unexpectedly one evening. When I found out that it was not completely safe for me to be within his reach, I visited him only when someone else was present. Now it was František Mikloško. Mečiar sat in front of the TV and watched the proceedings of the federal parliament on Klaus’ reforms. the moderator Jáchym Topol initially read a sample from the new book and continued.
“He was upset, he even had tears in his eyes. He cried quite often. I was wearing a beautiful dress at the time. He leaned on me and cried and cried. And then he blurted out: ‘When this Klaus reform happens in Slovakia, nobody will like me here anymore.’ By the way, he soon gave up and resigned to remain a pet. I had to throw the clothes away because the tears couldn’t be cleaned.” the moderator quoted from the book.
Vladimír Mečiar was born on July 26, 1942 in Zvolen. In addition to his job, when he worked as a smelter at the Heavy Engineering Works (ZŤS) in Dubnica nad Váhom, graduated from the Faculty of Law of the Comenius University in Bratislava via distance learning. After graduating, he worked in Skloobal Nemšová as a corporate lawyer from 1974 until 1990.
He became politically involved in the first half of the 1960s, holding various positions in the Czechoslovak Youth Union (ČSM). At the time of normalization, he was dismissed from his positions in the youth movement, and in 1970 he was also expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ) for his stance on the occupation of Czechoslovakia.
He re-entered political life after 1989 as part of the Public Against Violence (VPN) movement, for which he won a parliamentary mandate for the first time in 1990. However, in March 1991, he first founded a platform on the ground of this political entity, which grew into the following month the founding of a new party, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). From its creation in 1991, he was its chairman for 21 years until April 26, 2012, when he announced his departure from the party leadership. In June 2003, the Diet decided to change its name to the People’s Party – HZDS (ĽS-HZDS).
In the first half of 1990, he held the post of Minister of the Interior and the Environment in the Slovak government. After the parliamentary elections in June 1990, he became Prime Minister for the first time and served in this capacity until April 1991.
In June 1992, after another election to the Slovak National Council (SNR), he became prime minister again, holding the office until March 1994, when members of parliament expressed no confidence in him. During this reign, together with Czech Prime Minister Václav Klaus, he completed a series of negotiations that resulted in the division of the common state of Czechs and Slovaks.
From October 1992 to March 1993 and again from March 1998 to October 1998, he was also entrusted with the exercise of some of the powers of the President of the Slovak Republic as Prime Minister. Vladimír Mečiar took the prime minister’s seat for the third time after winning the parliamentary elections in December 1994. he was in office until October 1998. It was during this period that the president’s son Michal Kováč Jr. was kidnapped. (1995), Róbert Remiáš was killed (1996) and in 1997 the referendum was thwarted.
It was Vladimír Mečiar and his government that signed the decision of the European Commission, which on July 16, 1997, at the meeting in Strasbourg, did not recommend starting talks with Slovakia on the enlargement of the EU in the first wave, because the country did not meet the political criteria.
Prime Minister Mečiar’s appearance on Slovak television on September 30, 1998, when he announced his retirement from the political scene after losing the parliamentary elections, became memorable. At the end of the performance, with a song on his lips, “I am leaving you with the Lord God, I have not harmed, I have not harmed any of you!” he waved goodbye to his supporters and voters through the television screen.
A year later, in May 1999, he ran unsuccessfully in the first direct presidential election, the winner of which was Rudolf Schuster. Vladimír Mečiar applied for the position of head of state for the second time – in the presidential elections in 2004. Although he won the first round of the election with 32.7 percent, he won 40.1 percent of the votes in the second round and finished second behind Ivan Gašparovič (59.9 percent).
In the parliamentary elections of June 2010, the ĽS-HZDS did not make it to the NR SR. The movement won only 4.32 percent of the vote and had to leave the parliament after twenty years. After another unsuccessful parliamentary election in March 2012, in which ĽS-HZDS received only 0.93 percent of the voteMečiar announced on April 26, 2012 his departure from the head of the ĽS-HZDS.
The founder and former longtime chairman of the HZDS, Vladimír Mečiar, resigned from the party on December 12, 2013. The party did not elect a new chairman, and at an extraordinary assembly in Žilina on January 11, 2014, 161 out of 165 delegates decided to dissolve the party.
He tried to return to politics in November 2019, when members of the Slovak League party met on November 9 in Trenčín at the republican parliament. The delegates elected 77-year-old Vladimír Mečiar as the chairman of the party and at the same time as the leader of the candidate.
However, at the end of November 2019, Mečiar changed his mind and decided not to run in the parliamentary elections. In the elections held on February 29, 2020, the Slovak League received only 809 valid votes, which was 0.02 percent of the voters’ votes.
