Prokeš Would Be Happy With Mečiar as President

BRATISLAVA (SITA) - Slovak National Party honorary chair Jozef Prokeš said electing Slovak Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar as president would calm down the political situation in Slovakia. He told SITA that no official discussion of coalition partners featured expanding presidential authorities on Tuesday. "I do not see a reason why should we change the present system to an American one," Prokes said. Prokeš is certain that direct presidential elections would not find a president for Slovakia. The fact that 90 votes in Parliament with 150 seats are necessary to elect a president imposes a duty on the deputies to agree on one of the candidates. However, he says, this pressure is not effective yet. The governing coalition, as Prokeš says, in fact wanted to offer a positive gesture for the opposition when it did not propose a presidential candidate. Prokeš emphasized that the coalition does not want the public to think that when the coalition has a majority it wants to push through its candidate at any price. "We expected the parties first to discuss the candidates and only after to nominate them," he added. However, Prokeš stressed it makes no sense to discuss a candidate that the opposition nominated knowing that he/she is unacceptable for the coalition. He was reacting to the Slovak Democratic Coalition's proposal to discuss the candidacy of Štefan Markuš. He is certain that the opposition has no interest in electing a presient, and he brought up the example of Juraj Švec, who "was denigrated from his own lines," and raising Juraj Hrasko's candidacy when the Party of democratic Left aired whom it intends to nominate to the second round if Hraško fails in the first one.