INTERVIEW with Sulík: Kolíková wants to be a minister, not the head of the party! We hardly talk to Matovic – Topky.sk

I will start with the current arrival of six deputies around the Minister of Justice Mária Kolíková to the SaS club. You have an agreement with Mária Kolíková on how you imagine the further distribution of forces. In recent days, however, you have repeatedly emphasized that this must ultimately be decided by the coalition council. However, Igor Matovič stated that Mária Kolíková does not have his trust. Jaroslav Nad, another from OĽaNO, recalculated that SaS was mathematically based on about 2.3 ministers, but you have three at the expense of OĽaNO. With Mária Kolíková’s faction, you have to have a 3.1 minister, which is exactly the three departments you also have. That didn’t sound like support from them.

We must ask ourselves beforehand why we have three ministries, when it was mathematically based on 2.3 a year and a half ago, when this government was formed. And the reason is that I gave in to Igor Matovič at the Ministry of Finance, to which I think we were entitled. The price for this concession was that we got three ministries and I think it is completely correct and it is fine. And now not only Mária Kolíková came to our ministerial club, but also six deputies to the parliamentary club of the Freedom and Solidarity party. And six deputies correspond to one minister. If you divide the number of coalition deputies, of which there are 92, 16 members of the government, you will get some 5.7, which is rounded to 6. So the fact that the number of ministers will increase by one is fine, because the number of deputies will also increase by six. .

And the support from them?

What matters to me is what is said in the coalition council, but even that does not decide everything. The coalition council cannot agree that two and two is five.

When should you have a coalition council?

It should be Wednesday.

It is known that you want to keep Maria Kolíková in the ministerial chair. I will now ask hypothetically. If there was no agreement at the coalition council on this point, what would that mean for you and for the coalition as such?

I will not overtake. And I won’t mainly refer anything to our coalition partners. The Coalition Council is on Wednesday, and I have already said that our fundamental demand is for Mária Kolíková to remain Minister. I will keep it at this level.

Would that be a reason for you to leave the government?

I have now answered this and I will not tell you any more.

Source: Topky – Ján Zemiar

The agreement with Mária Kolíková and her faction has 23 points. In which are you willing to retreat?

The agreement has points that concern Mária Kolíková, her deputies and the SaS party. We didn’t make agreements on anyone else. It is in it that 9 or 10 places on our candidate will belong to the people around Mária Kolíková or that they have one place on the Euro-candidate, we will support Marek Hattas as Mayor of Nitra and such things.

I understand that. I am asking more about personnel issues such as the post of Vice-President of Parliament for Tomáš Lehotský, the place of committee chairs for Vladimíra Marcinková and Vladimír Ledecký.

We are ready to negotiate and we are also ready to negotiate whether Veronika Remišová will remain a minister. Because he has only two or four deputies behind him. So two have some and the other two I don’t even know if they want to stay at the For People club.

Would you like Veronika Remišová to remain in the ministerial chair?

I am ready to support this under certain circumstances. But the difference is that while we say to Maria Kolíková that our fundamental requirement is that she remain a minister, we say to Veronika Remišová that we can imagine it and we are ready to support it. But there must also be the will of others.

Can you specify the “certain circumstances” under which you would support Veronika Remišová?

Therefore, to be calm in the coalition. If it is part of a larger agreement, we will say to ourselves that, well, we will now close it, let it be peace, and we can look ahead and continue our work. For example, in these circumstances.

Source: Topky – Ján Zemiar

What is the atmosphere like in the coalition now?

Quite good and it is certainly better than it looks from the outside, as it is written about in the media or as the opposition shouts. I am communicating in particular with Prime Minister Eduard Heger, and communication with him is very effective, of good quality and the agreements are valid. That’s key for me.

So has it improved after the change of prime minister?

Unequivocally. Plus, Edo Heger is a native integrator who strives to bring people together. This, of course, makes it easier to function.

What are your current relationships with Igor Matovic?

Virtually none. When we communicate in the government and the bare minimum. But fortunately, this does not reflect the cooperation of our ministries. It works very well there. For example, at Kileček II. Ľuboš Jančík, State Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, came to the Ministry of Economy together with top officials from the Ministry, and the debate we had on individual points was very constructive. And there were many points that concern the Ministry of Finance and fall under the rule.

In the latest survey by Focus, you rank third behind Direction-SD and Voice-SD. You are the best of the coalitions. You could say that you have a good time at the moment. Can’t such interference in another party’s problems hurt you?

Not. I think not. We have a 12-year history, of which we have been in parliament for 11 years, and so far we have only taken one Member from another party, Eugene Jurzyc. Otherwise no one. This is actually the second time that other Members have joined us. There are six of them, but I mean that we do not take anyone who is free and willing to join our parliamentary group. We made a good choice and all those people are very good and hardworking. That’s why I think it will benefit the party.

SaS is not just Richard Sulík. How did the communication to the inside of the party about the adoption of the Pin faction take place?

We have a presidency in which the party’s vice-presidents, the head of the parliamentary group, the general manager and I, as the party’s chairman, are. It went there first and I also called my colleagues for meetings. We had two or three of them longer. The agreement has 23 points and is written very precisely because good contracts make friends. So the vice-presidents, the general manager and the head of the club were involved from the beginning. Then, when the agreement was mature, Anka Zemanová took over the parliamentary club and I the Republican Council, which is elected directly by the members of the party. I called every one of its members. Of course, they also received the text of the agreement itself, and then we had a vote on whether they would empower me and give me a mandate so that I could sign something like that. Before the announcement on Wednesday, I also informed our membership about what will happen.

Source: Topky – Ján Zemiar

Did you have any negative feedback?

There are always different voices, but for the most part, these were just positive reactions from both inside and outside, that it was good that they were coming to us and that it would strengthen the party.

I also ask this because, according to the mentioned agreement, they should have nine or ten places on the candidate, which is quite a lot…

Of 150?

It depends on what the places are. Have you talked about this before?

They talked. I won’t tell you, but we have an agreement.

You have people in the party who have been in it since the beginning. Many of them have literally been working for it for years, some were in its founding. Wouldn’t these people take a negative view of someone coming from outside and getting to the forefront of the candidate, perhaps at their expense?

You know, putting together a candidate is always the most grateful task, because you will never satisfy everyone. I have always compiled it for us and proposed it to the Republican Council. So I said to myself that if everyone is a little dissatisfied, it’s the optimal state. And I am convinced that it will succeed this time as well. It will continue to be observed that those who do so will move forward. I have always taken care of that and I will take care of that now. Fortunately, the people who came know how to work and show it, so I’m not afraid we won’t find such a good match here.

In the case of Mária Kolíková, the problems she had with Veronika Remišová also concerned her ambition to become chairwoman of the For People party. Here he is now in the position of having the promised position on the candidate. Will that be enough for her?

To correct you, the promise is that if he runs, it will be on the SaS candidate. And then when it comes down to it, it depends on which party’s boss. The People’s Party is preferentially very low, and I see an extremely low chance of getting into parliament. And the alternative is that although Mária Kolíková is not the chairwoman of the party, a strong parliamentary party with a long tradition gives it a guarantee that it will be a minister. I think it has more value and Mária Kolíková saw it that way as well. That’s why we actually agreed.

Source: Topky – Ján Zemiar

Can you imagine that some of the new members of the Pin Faction would join the party itself?

We didn’t talk about it at all. We do not condition any other agreements on old age membership. SaS membership is a privilege. Whoever wants to make an application, we will assess it, we have strict rules, and then we will say whether or not.

I will also ask about one internal issue of the For People party. After the departure of the Pin Faction, Tomáš Meravý informed about the internal audit, criticizing the way in which the party’s financial resources were handled. The names of Vladimíra Marcinková and Roman Krpelan, which are the people you named in the nine or ten, also fell. How do you evaluate such allegations and suspicions?

I must say that the high sums surprised me. Probably someone had to approve it, maybe Andrej Kiska personally, maybe Veronika Remišová. I don’t know, as you said, it’s an internal matter for the People’s Party. But I must say that these are very generous fees. Maybe I’ll consider it and go work for the For the People party. After all, it is double the salary of a minister (smile). In the SaS party, the representatives were never paid and Mária Kolíková and her team knew this in advance.

Did you ask about that?

He didn’t ask. I have quite a few robots. Sometimes someone may explain it to me, but I don’t see it as a key thing. And Tomáš Meravý was also criticized for publishing it, but I must say that it was an interesting read. By the way, such a removal from the party kitchen does not honor him at all …

I would like to move on to the topic of coronavirus. The numbers started to grow again, and hospitals are filling up. Should we be worried about another area lockdown?

No, I don’t see it that way. There is nothing to suggest either in the government or in the coalition. But we have a covid machine that has its own rules for certain numbers of infected. But maybe we’ll fix it more. But basically, I think we should keep an eye on the number of hospitalized people, not the number of those infected, because there are quite a few of them, and moreover, out of the approximately 170 people who are in hospitals, 91 percent are not vaccinated or not fully vaccinated. Only 9 percent are properly vaccinated. That speaks for itself. If you don’t want to end up in the hospital, you can get vaccinated.

The current covid machine was criticized by some experts. So is there a question of adjusting it on the table?

Yes, I have suggested it over and over again. We should adjust this by giving more weight to the number of hospitalized or by not taking children under 12 into account. And there are other technical proposals. But the one responsible is the Lengvar Minister of Health.

Source: Topky – Ján Zemiar

We were in a similar situation a year ago. After a relatively quiet flight, the second wave came, but at times it seemed as if the government had not prepared for it in any way, although the fact that it was coming was spoken aloud. Has anything changed this year?

Clearly. Please, nice, firstly we have a covid machine and secondly 2.5 million people are vaccinated.

And how do you evaluate the vaccination strategy itself and the motivation of people to be vaccinated? Because you spoke in the negative about the vaccine lottery…

We did not agree with her and we did not vote for her either. It dishonors the project, it devalues ​​it. On the contrary, the best time was when people were running, they wanted it, and we had to accept that there would be a fine of 10,000 euros for overtaking, which is the same humbug as the vaccine lottery, but now it has turned around and we are selling it as sour milk. . At the same time, it is cream. But we make sour milk out of it, because we support and push it terribly. It is necessary to let this happen and publish every day how many people in hospitals are unvaccinated. Then everyone will consider whether they want to lie in a hospital for two weeks with a relatively high risk of death.