Former journalist, columnist and priest In 1996, Karol Lovaš recorded the unflattering words of Ivan Gašparovič (85) addressed to the then president Michal Kováč († 86), which probably every Slovak remembers. “Gusto, come finish it. They’re calling me over there to see that old sh**,” he said in the recording, which was heard by the whole nation. Later, Gašparovič explained it by saying that he was talking about an old “uncle”, but he did not specify who it was.
Regarding this case, v years later, the author of the recordings himself spoke and revealed how the ex-presidents had a relationship with each other. “Looking back, I realize that thanks to journalism, I understood that there are several images through which we can look at a person, at events. That’s the media image and then there’s the reality. These can be completely different things. When we mentioned those cases, I recorded the famous “old uncle”, when the then chairman of the National People’s Republic of Slovakia called the president Kováč in an unflattering way,” Lováš recalled and continued.
“And the cut. Then at the end of President Kováč’s life, I went to confess him in the hospital, we talked and he once said to me: “Karolka, if you had come yesterday, you would have met Ivan here.” I mean – what kind of Ivan? And he says: ‘President Gašparovič comes to see me every day and supports me, gives me money.’ At that time, he had a small pension and large expenses for that care,” he added.
According to his own words, the former journalist then realized that President Gašparovič had never talked about it. He also learned from Kováč that he had apologized to him in parliament that day.
“What a great person he must be who, when journalists were after him and constantly criticized him during his candidacy for president, he didn’t say that it was closed and that they had resolved it between themselves. He kept the ‘donkey’s head’ that he put on himself and held such repentance that I had done something wrong, so now I will eat the soup of bitterness to the bottom. There I realized that if we know the truth in life, we don’t have to refute a lie, we don’t have to prove anything to anyone, if we know how things are or aren’t,” Lovaš concluded.
Michal Kováč was born on August 3, 1930 in the village of Ľubiša (Humenné district). He graduated from the Business Academy in Humenno and the University of Economics (VŠE, today the University of Economics) in Bratislava. He then worked at the University of Economics as an assistant and then until 1967 as an external teacher. At the same time, he was also active in the Regional Institute of the Czechoslovak State Bank. In 1965-1966, he also lectured at the Banking School in Cuba.
He went to London, where in the period 1967-1969 he was the deputy of Živnostenská banka, but after two years he was dismissed, he returned and in 1970 he was expelled from the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia (KSČ). He became a rank-and-file bank clerk at ŠBČS, in the Bratislava-Mesto branch. He worked in banking until 1989.
After November 1989, Michal Kováč was involved in the Public Against Violence (VPN) movement. In December 1989, he became the Minister of Finance, Wages and Prices of the Slovak Republic in the government of national understanding of Milan Čič. In the first free elections in June 1990, as a VPN candidate, he was elected as a member of the People’s House of the Federal Assembly of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic (FZ ČSSR), respectively of the Czech and Slovak Federal Republic (ČSFR, 1990 – 1992).
He also held the position of Minister of Finance in the government of Vladimír Mečiar, which emerged from the first free elections in 1990. He left his post on May 18, 1991, less than a month after the dismissal of Vladimír Mečiar from the position of prime minister. Together with him, he was at the birth of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). In the years 1991 – 1993, he was its member and vice-chairman for the economic area. After the parliamentary elections in 1992, he was re-elected as a member of the FZ ČSFR, he was a member of the Presidium of the FZ ČSFR, and on June 26, 1992 he was elected chairman. He served in this capacity until the dissolution of the ČSFR on December 31, 1992.
Kováč became the first president of the independent Slovak Republic, they elected him on February 15, 1993 in the second round of elections as a HZDS candidate. He was in the highest office from March 2, 1993 to March 2, 1998. In 1994, he was awarded the Prize of the Institute for East-West Studies in the USA for an extraordinary contribution to international understanding.
During his official visit to Poland, he was awarded the Grand Cross for services to the Republic of Poland. A year later, he received the Award of the American Bar Association – a legal initiative for Central and Eastern Europe – for an extraordinary contribution to the development of the rule of law, as well as the Award of the Lions Club.
On the basis of the law arising from the Constitution of the Slovak Republic, in 1995 President Kováč was awarded state honors of the 1st class – the Order of Ľudovít Štúr, the Cross of Milan Rastislav Štefánik, the Order of Andrej Hlinka and the Cross of Pribin. In 1997, during an official visit to Slovakia, the President of the Republic of Poland, Alexander Kwasniewski, presented him with the highest Polish state award, the Order of the White Eagle. Michal Kováč died on October 5, 2016 at the age of 86 in Bratislava of heart failure.
