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| Affiliation | Movement for a Democratic Slovakia |
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| Name | Vladimír Mečiar |
| Address |
, , Slovakia |
| Email | None |
| Website | None |
| Born |
July 26, 1942
(81 years)
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| Contributor | User 13 |
| Last Modifed | Ralphie
Dec 26, 2008 01:38pm |
| Tags |
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| Info | Vladimír Mečiar (born 26 July 1942) is a former Prime Minister of Slovakia, an autocratic populist who led Slovakia to a smooth disengagement from the Czech Republic and a swift independence.
Starting in the Communist Party, the only road to prominence, he became committee chairman in the town of Ziar Nad Hronom, only to be dismissed in the year after the Soviet 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 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 law school while working in a glass factory, and his tough blue-collar style appealed to Slovaks. As a leader of the group Public Against Violence (VPN), which was the Slovak counterpart to the better-known the Czech Civic Forum during the fast-paced 1989 anti-Communist revolution, Meciar was appointed Minister of the Interior and Environment in the Slovak Republic within Czechoslovakia in January 1990. By June he was named Slovak premier and was advocating economic reform and continued federation with the Czechs.
Yet by the end of 1990 his partners in the VPN began distancing themselves from him. His official visit to the Soviet Union in mid-March 1991, when he held secret talks with Soviet generals about arms sales, it soon appeared, made VPN members more uneasy. In April 1991 a motion of no confidence ousted him from the Slovak national council. The VPN split in two: "The splitting of the VPN into the HZDS (Meciar's party for a Democratic Slovakia) and ODU (the reconstituted VPN) was not a separation caused by politics," said ODU spokesman Gustav Matijekm at the time, "It was merely a personality problem because one person, Meciar, became a dictator."
While he was forming his opposition group, Meciar found that tough talk about Slovakian independence tended to boost his popularity. The June 1992 elections found him back in power as Prime Minister and pressing for independence for Slovakia. If he though that the urbanized, progressive, liberal, European Czechs were going to resist, he may have been surprised at the ease and speed with which the Czech Republic divested itself of more conservative, resentful, rust-belt, agricultural Slovakia, and while the European press watched with open approval, on January 1, 1993, Meciar and Slovakia got their wish.
Meciar was Prime Minister of Slovakia 1992 - 1994 and again in 1994 - 1998. Since 1991 he has remained the leader of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS), called "People's Party-HZDS (Ľudov� strana-HZDS)" since 2000.
He has been described as having an autocratic style of administration.
He was born in Zvolen, the eldest of four boys. His father was a tailor, and his mother a housewife.
Meciar has been involved in a number of scandals, including a possible kidnapping (not proven as of 2003).
Although Meciar won the September 1998 election, Mikulas Dzurinda became the new Prime Minister. As a right-of-center populist party on the fragmented Slovakian political scene, the HZDS enjoys a steady support by one third of the Slovaks eligible to vote.
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