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Bratislava (AP) - The Slovak Prime Minister Igor Matovic has surprisingly announced that he will be stepping down in favor of Finance Minister Eduard Heger.
He himself will take over its function.
The change at the top of the government was announced jointly in Bratislava after deliberations between the party leaders of three of the four coalition parties.
A government crisis that has been going on for weeks could thus be resolved for the time being.
The 44-year-old Heger, who belongs to the Matovic Movement Ordinary People and Independent Personalities OLaNO, announced talks with all previous coalition parties.
After that, he wants to meet President Zuzana Caputova on Monday, who according to the constitution is entitled to appoint a new head of government.
The trained marketing expert Heger is assigned to the Christian-conservative wing of the OLaNO.
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Initially, the liberal party Freedom and Solidarity SaS was the only coalition party not involved in the agreement.
On Sunday evening, however, she also announced in a statement to the state news agency TASR that she would support Heger as head of government.
The three other governing parties would have a narrow parliamentary majority even without SaS.
The four-party coalition got into a serious crisis in the dispute over the corona policy.
In the course of the dispute, six of the 16 government members had recently resigned from their offices within a few days.
The two smaller coalition parties SaS and Für die Menschen (Za ludi) accused the former media entrepreneur Matovic of self-importance and blamed him for the fact that Slovakia recently recorded more corona deaths in relation to its population than almost any other country in the world.
Another point of contention was that Matovic, against a decision by his own government, ordered the Sputnik V vaccine from Russia and picked up the first delivery personally at the airport.
The main problem, however, is not Sputnik V, but Matovic's "unbearable style of government", stressed his internal coalition critics repeatedly.
Matovic had already offered his resignation a week ago, but made several conditions.
Among other things, all of his internal coalition critics should leave the government beforehand.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210328-99-06002 / 2