Kiska Wants to Continue Boosting Trust in Office of President
Bratislava, June 15 (TASR) – The most important task is to restore public trust in the President’s Office, President Andrej Kiska told journalists on the occasion of the second anniversary of his inauguration and Open House Day at Presidential Palace on Wednesday.
Kiska is content with the progress of this endeavour. “I came into the Palace with the determination to restore trust in the President’s Office, so that people would say: it’s worthwhile to have a president. It’s meaningful,” he said. “I’m doing my utmost about this.”
The President underlined that, according to polls, the trust in President is ‘relatively good’ nowadays. “But there’s still a lot of work ahead,” he said.
Kiska is quite happy with his decisions and stances while in office and wouldn’t make any significant revisions to any of them in hindsight. Even if given a chance to turn back the clock, he still wouldn’t invite far-right LSNS chair Marian Kotleba to the Presidential Palace following the general election nor would he use a more diplomatic language when referring to him. “He’s a fascist and I certainly wouldn’t have met him.”
Kiska also rejected the notion that he’s not levelling enough criticism at politicians. “The task of the president is to defuse the situation not escalate it. Many Opposition politicians would like to make a battering ram out of the president, but it’s not the president’s role to stir emotions and make waves.”
The President pointed out that he was critical about a number of issues, such as the state of health care. Also in a critical vein will again be the State of the Republic address, slated to be given in Parliament on Thursday (June 16), when he will broach corruption, which remains a long-term problem in his view. “It is the duty of a president to speak their mind when they feel that the situation is developing the wrong way.”
In the remaining three years of his term, Kiska wants to focus on new challenges that Slovakia must face. “We’re witnessing today the polarisation of society and the rise of extremism. I’m truly concerned that if this Government won’t function successfully, then explicitly non-democratic parties might get to the government after the next general election,” he warned.
