BRATISLAVA, August 22, (WEBNOVINY) – The HZD party, established by incumbent President Ivan Gasparovic in 2002, will not merge with the opposition SMER-SD party, announced HZD leader Jozef Grapa on Sunday following the meeting of the party’s leaders. According to Grapa, the SMER-SD regional structures did not observe the agreement to allow registration of all HZD members with the SMER party, and therefore the interest in the step was minimum. The decision was also influenced by the fact that the party founder and honorary chairman Ivan Gasparovic is the head of state.
In February of this year, the HZD party congress decided that the party would cease to exist by the end of the year and its members would join the SMER-SD party. The congress assigned a task to the party chairmanship to work on steps to merge with the SMER-SD party. HZD chairman Jozef Grapa told the press that the party would support the candidate list of the SMER-SD in the June parliamentary elections. According to him, the programs of HZD and SMER-SD are very similar and even identical to a great extent.
According to the party leader, the SMER-SD party remains the closest partner to HZD with regard to its program. Also, the decision to support the SMER-SD party in the June parliamentary elections was correct, as votes of socially-oriented voters were not broken up. The party has started preparing for the regional elections.
Ivan Gasparovic founded the HZD in 2002 with several other former members of Vladimir Meciar’s party HZDS, after he was omitted from the party’s candidate list for parliamentary elections in 2002. However, he was unable to get into parliament with the HZD as the party remained well below the five percent threshold. However, they earned enough votes to be eligible to a contribution from the state budget, as their election result exceeded three percent of votes. In 2004, Ivan Gasparovic was elected president and Jozef Grapa replaced him as party chairman in HZD. He has held this post since. Ivan Gasparovic is the honorary chairman of HZD. The party has 2,200 registered members.
SITA