Ziga: Assassination Attempt and Pellegrini's Election Biggest Events of 2024

Bratislava, January 2 (TASR) - The most politically significant events to place in Slovakia in 2024 were the assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico (Smer-SD) on May 15, the election of Peter Pellegrini as Slovak president and the approval of the financial consolidation package, House Vice-chair Peter Ziga, who's been tasked with heading Parliament on a temporary basis, has told TASR in an end-of-year interview. Ziga stated that the 2024 presidential election in the spring brought the victory of a political president. "Peter Pellegrini won and, after a period of ten years, after the tenures of president Andrej Kiska and president Zuzana Caputova, there was a political president again," said Ziga, adding that he considers Kiska and Caputova to be presidents generated more by civil society than by political life. "From now on, President Pellegrini will perceive politics from the Presidential Palace as a political president. He's got sufficient experience, he's been in politics for more than 20 years, so the clout of the Presidential Palace on political developments in Slovak politics is going to be completely different from how it was with the previous two presidents. And he'll be a good president," added Ziga, who believes that Pellegrini's election is an event that will influence Slovakia in the next five years as well because he expects Pellegrini to vie for re-election. "The biggest political event of 2024 was the assassination attempt on the prime minister," stated Ziga, adding that it was an unprecedented event that should have never happened. "The personal animosities of some frustrated people led to the use of violence against the third most senior constitutional official in Slovakia, and that has influenced political developments in Slovakia significantly," he added. The approval of the consolidation package and state budget in 2025 are accomplishments of consequence, he said. In Ziga's view, they are a response to the previous three years of the governments of Igor Matovic, Eduard Heger and Ludovit Odor. "It's certainly not very positive having to raise taxes, it's not positive to cut expenditures, but we needed to address this somehow," he stated, adding that the government has also approved measures to cushion the impacts of consolidation. mf/df