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Central Europe
March 16, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 12
“Ladies and gentlemen, I am not saying goodbye at all. We will see each other soon at press briefs and as a head of the strongest party I will be part of the coalition council,” Fico said. “Mr President, you can be calm, I am not leaving, I will be an ac- tive chairman of the political party,” added Fico, raising speculation that he might try to steer the government from behind the scenes like Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of the ruling conservative Law and Justice party in Poland.
Fico also attacked the opposition: "It would have thrown the country into instability. Just imagine those gentlemen and ladies from the opposition, I won't name names, how they would govern." Slovakia's opposition is a collection of small four rightwing parties ranging from Eurosceptics to populists and neo-fascists.
Pellegrini has no time limitation when to form a new government according to the Slovak constitu- tion, but he said that it's in his interest "to make changes in the government over the course of several days and not weeks or months".
"The nomination of Peter Pellegrini is the most natural thing,” Fico told journalists in the Presi- dential Palace, side by side with Pellegrini, after he filed his resignation.
"It is immensely demanding and I admit I have not slept properly for two nights," Pellegrini told journalists after meeting with Kiska.
"The change that took place occurred in a consti- tutional fashion. I can imagine that many people have been left unsatisfied and a preponderance of Most-Hid voters might consider this a quite contradictory signal to what Most-Hid kept de- claring just a few days earlier. On the other hand, we don't know the specifics of informal deals concluded at the party's Republican council [on Monday, March 12]," political scientist Juraj Marusiak. According to him, Fico will keep considerable political clout as party chair.
Justice Minister and coalition Most-Hid Vice-chair Lucia Zitnanska said earlier that she won’t be part of the government. “First and foremost I've decided not to continue because I'm convinced that I cannot represent either this or the new government any- more," said Zitnanska. "My differing attitudes with SNS [Slovak National Party], but also with some members of the Smer-SD party no longer allow me to meet the expectations of the public," she added.
The opposition parties had called a no-confidence vote against Fico for March 19, which won't take place, in light of the fact that Fico resigned on his own.
Uber reaches agreement with the Czech government
bne IntelliNews
Uber has reached an agreement with the Czech government to standardise its operations
in the country following protests organised
by taxi drivers. The car hailing company will immediately ask for a trading licence in the Czech Republic, its drivers will have the same or similar licence as taxi drivers, and will register their sales, Prime Minister Andrej Babis (Ano) said after meeting Uber’s representatives.
“Uber has a company here [in Czechia], which is doing only marketing, but business is done from the Netherlands. Therefore, they will ask imme- diately for a trading licence. We will sign a memo- randum of understanding by the end of March, which will also include the obligation for all Uber drivers to have a licence,” Babis said.
Mayoress of Prague Adriana Krnacova (Ano)