The Presidents of the Slovak Republic

Quite apart from the Slovak State of 1939-1945, which, according to its Constitution was also a Republic, when the country was under the control of German Third Reich, and its President was Dr.Jozef Tiso, the present, post-communist Slovak Republic exists since the 1st of January 1993, when the Czecho-Slovak Federation split peacefully into two countries.

According to the Slovak Constitution of 1992, the parliament elected the President with a three-fifths majority of all votes for a term of five years. In the second round, Michal Kovac (Michal Kováč) has been elected as the first President of the Slovak Republic. Vladimir Meciar (Vladimír Mečiar), the leader of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) was the Prime Minister then. Michal Kovac was a member of Meciar's HZDS before he was elected to the post of President.

His presidential term ended in March 1998, when Vladimir Meciar was still the Prime Minister. Many conflicts between these two men arose during Michal Kovac's term in office and for some time no At that time the task of electing the President was the responsibility of the Parliament. According to the constitution, the Prime Minister Meciar together with the Speaker of the Parliament Ivan Gasparovic (Ivan Gašparovič) took over the presidential functions after Michal Kovac had left his office.

After the parliamentary elections in September 1998, the coalition of the new Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda (Mikuláš Dzurinda) changed the constitution, so that the President is now elected directly by citizens in a two-rounds system.

The first direct presidential elections took place in May 1999. No candidate obtained the required more than 50% of votes in the first round, so Vladimir Meciar and Rudolf Schuster, the two highest-scoring candidates, proceeded to the second round. In this second round, Rudolf Schuster won and became the second President of the Slovak Republic. This vote was called "a lesser evil", because many people voted for Schuster only because they definitely didn't want Meciar.

Five years later, in April 2004, the new presidential elections took place. In the first round, the then current President Rudolf Schuster was a contesting candidate, as well as three-times former Prime Minister and once unsuccessful presidential candidate Vladimir Meciar, former Meciar's right hand and Speaker of the Parliament Ivan Gasparovic, as well as the then-and-current Foreign Affairs Minister Eduard Kukan, former Ambassador to USA Martin Butora (Martin Bútora), Christian-Democrat Frantisek Miklosko (František Mikloško) and several other hopefuls.

Surprisingly, the governments favourite, Eduard Kukan, didn't succeed and lost out to the second favourite Ivan Gasparovic, by barely a few thousand votes. As it turned out Vladimir Meciar obtained the most votes. Still, it had to go to the second round.

Once again it was a case of "a lesser evil". But now it was more problematic, because while Rudolf Schuster was a former communist official fifteen years ago, Ivan Gasparovic was the right hand of Vladimir Meciar only a few years ago. Finally, Ivan Gasparovic obtained more votes than his former party boss and became the third President of the Slovak Republic. His term began on 15th June 2004.