Heger’s outgoing advisor Štulajter: The Prime Minister is too affected by Matovič’s gravitational field – Denník N

Former journalist, SME commentator and writer Ivan Štulajter (59) is leaving the post of media advisor to Prime Minister Eduard Heger. The consultant, who previously worked for SaS and Richard Sulík for eight years, says in the interview: why he is leaving his position and will no longer advise Heger; who, according to him, is mainly to blame for the government crisis and SaS’s departure from the coalition; what credit does Richard Sulík have for the situation; what the collapse of the coalition will cause; how is the relationship between Prime Minister Eduard Heger and OĽaNO chairman Igor Matovič Why are you leaving Prime Minister Heger? Because I don’t agree with where this situation has gone. I am very concerned about where the development in this country is heading, and I also do not agree with the role that Prime Minister Eduard Heger played in it. What does it mean – what role did he play in it? Which one should he play? From my point of view, a situation arose when the public, commentators, simply a large group of people evaluated it in such a way that the Prime Minister’s consensuality turned out to be his weakness in the border situation. In terms of the Prime Minister’s credibility, this is a very serious matter in such a crisis as we have found ourselves. And I don’t mean only the domestic political situation, but also international contexts. From my point of view, it is an insoluble problem of where to shift communication when there is a very strong public belief that he should have acted more forcefully as Prime Minister and pushed for a solution more. By solution, do you mean the departure of Matovič? The crisis has some outcome and let’s say that the last three months have been really stifling here. However, the crisis has its own development. It is accompanied by the fact that the foundations of normal, decent and substantive communication between the coalition leaders have been disrupted. From the point of view of prevention, the brake should have been stepped on earlier. The Prime Minister would certainly say that he acted and is acting, but, unfortunately, those people – and I mean Messrs. Sulík, Kollár and Matovič – are equipped with such personal qualities that things do not go well with them. I understand his position, the prime minister is a consensus politician, a politician of reasonable compromises and a politician of values, but these three are masters of destruction. Their constitutional promise to act in the interests of the citizens does not bind them to anything. So it wouldn’t work with Heger or without Heger? Apparently. Messrs. Sulík and Matovič are two incompatible people. It is a big problem, for which Slovakia may now also pay. So what could Heger have done and not done? Should he have reconciled the two? I will answer that question by saying that I announced my departure to the Prime Minister on Monday. In the evening we also met and talked. I told him my reasons, he accepted them with understanding, and finally we parted amicably. I don’t want to dictate to him what he should and shouldn’t have done in this conversation, because I want our relations to remain good. And I do it also for the reason that if at this moment he is not behaving as well as he could according to observers, and not only according to the editors of Denník N, but according to a very wide constellation of experts and political scientists, there is still a certain chance that he would he could behave. That’s also why I don’t want to put him in a situation where I’m going to get on top of him in some way. Eduard Heger still has many big tasks and challenges ahead of him. I don’t want it to close. Between the lines of your words, I read that you are talking about the fact that he was probably too fixated on Matovič and did not act to calm the situation. Yes. When people urged him to be more forceful, the first assumption was that he would have to break away from the gravitational field of Igor Matovič. He didn’t do that. I do not know the reason and can only speculate whether it is a personal friendship, or it is some kind of martyrdom, or there was some other interest in it. In any case, he didn’t. So he remained in Matovič’s gravitational field, and finally SaS presented ten demands a few days ago, from which it was obvious that the crisis could hardly be resolved in such a way. Those demands looked as if they were written by Matovič rather than Heger. I think Matovič wrote them. Certainly some people entered it and combed it, but the basis is his. When was the turning point for you when you decided that you were ending up with the prime minister? It happened the day after the OĽaNO teambuilding. And from what we know, the prime minister fully supported Matovič and did not in any way join the small group – Stančík, Čekovský, Budaj – who proposed easing the conditions. And it wasn’t about Matovič’s resignation, it was about softening the conditions so that they could be fulfilled by SaS. Yes, that was the moment. How has your work been since July this year? What course of action towards solving the crisis did you advise Heger? All the strategies and ideas I thought about finally came crashing down on this This article is exclusive content for Denník N subscribers. Are you a subscriber? Sign in