Home > Vladimir Meciar
Vladimír Meciar (born July 26 1942) is the leader of the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (LS-HZDS) and a former Prime Minister of Slovakia. He led Slovakia to a disengagement from the Czech Republic. He was one of the leading presidential candidates in Slovakia in 1999 and 2004. He has been criticised by his opponents as well as by Western political organisations for having an autocratic style of administration and lack of respect for democratic order.1 Czechoslovakia
He was born in Zvolen in 1942 as the eldest of four boys. His father was a tailor, and his mother a housewife.
Starting in the Communist Party of Slovakia, the only road to prominence in Communist Czechoslovakia, he became committee chairman in the town of Ziar nad Hronom , only to be dismissed in the year after the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia, when he delivered a pro-reform speech to the national congress in 1969 and was thrown out. A year later he was also expelled from the Communist Party and then added to the Communist Party Central Committee's long list of enemies of the socialist regime, a fact that he was to turn to his advantage later. He put himself through the Faculty of Law of the Comenius University while working in a glass factory
In late 1989, i. e. during the fast-paced 1989 anti-Communist Velvet revolution, he - just like most Slovaks - entered the first non-Communist political party Public Against Violence (Verejnost proti násiliu, VPN), which was the Slovak counterpart to the better-known Czech Civic Forum. On January 11 1990, when the VPN was looking for professionals to participate in the government of Slovakia, Meciar was appointed the new Minister of the Interior and Environment of Slovakia on a recommendation of Alexander DubcekAlexander Dubcek ( November 27, 1921 November 7, 1992) was a Slovak politician and briefly leader of Czechoslovakia ( 1968- 1969). An overview of his functions: : 1951- 1955 and 1960- 1968 and 1969- 1970: member of/ in 1969 speaker of the federal parliame, who was impressed by Meciar‘s thorough knowledge in all relevant fields.
After the first democratic elections in Czechoslovakia in June 1990, he was named Slovak premier (representing the VPN) of a coalition government of VPN and the Christian Democratic MovementThe Christian Democratic Movement ( Slovak: Krestansko-demokraticke hnutie (KDH) is a political party in Slovakia. It is a member of the parliament and of the government coalition (as of early 2004). It was established in the early 1990s. Currenty, it is. He was advocating economic reform and continued federation with the Czechs.
The year 1990 was a year, when the political landscape of the Czech Republic and Slovakia started to develop, so that many new political parties arose (mainly from the Civic Forum and the VPN). By the end of 1990, some of Meciar‘s partners in the VPN began distancing themselves from him. First, the party split into 2 fractions in early March 1991: the Meciar supporters (by and large members of his cabinet) and Meciar opponents (led by the then VPN chairman Fedor Gál ). Then, on April 23 1991, the Presidium of the Slovak parliament ( Slovak National Council ) deposed him as premier of Slovakia and he was replaced by Ján Carnogurský , the then leader of the Christian Democratic Movement. Three days later, the VPN officially split in two: the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and the remaining VPN (since October 1991 called ODÚ-VPN, later just ODÚ ). Meciar was elected HZDS chairman in June 1991. The official reason given by the ODÚ for this split was that Meciar had become a “dictator“.
In 1991 and 1992, there were frequent, but fruitless, negotiations between the Czech Republic and Slovak Republic concerning the future relations between the two constituent republics of Czechoslovakia. The winners of the June 1992 elections in Czechoslovakia and new prime ministers were the Civic Democratic PartyThe Civic Democratic Party ( Czech: Obcanska demokraticka strana abbreviation: ODS) is a eurosceptic, right-wing political party in the Czech Republic. The party was founded in 1991, after the Civic Forum split, by Vaclav Klaus and it is currently led by led by Václav KlausVaclav Klaus (born 19 June 1941) is the second President of the Czech Republic and a former Prime Minister of the Czech Republic. He is indisputably one of the most important Czech politicians of the recent era. Klaus was born in Prague and graduated from in the Czech Republic and the HZDS led by Vladimír Meciar in Slovakia. Before and shortly after this election, the HZDS supported the creation of a looser federation – a confederation - between the two republics. Its Czech counterpart however wanted an even more centralised Czechoslovakia then was the case in 1992 or two separate countries. Since these two concepts were irreconcilable, Meciar and Klaus agreed (after intense negotiations, but without having consulted the population in a referendum) on July 23 in BratislavaBratislava is the capital of Slovakia and the country's largest city, with a population of some 430,000. Bratislava lies on the River Danube, at Slovakia's borders with Austria and Hungary, and relatively close to the border with the Czech Republic. It is to dissolve Czechoslovakia and to create two independent states. As a result, Meciar and Klaus became the premiers of two independent states on January 1 1993.
