First Slovak president Michal Kováč would have turned 90

Monday marked ninety years since the birth of the first Slovak president, Michal Kováč. He was born in 1930 in the eastern Slovak village of Ľubiša. On February 15, 1993, he was elected as the first president of the independent Slovak Republic. He held the post of president from March 2, 1993 to March 2, 1998. Kováč's tenure as head of state was marked by conflict with prime minister Vladimír Mečiar, as the president did not agree with some of the actions and decisions of the government. Kováč's State of the Republic Address, which he presented to Parliament in March 1994, resulted in a no-confidence vote on Mečiar and the fall of his second government. His son, Michal Kováč, Jr., was illegally taken to Austria in the late summer of 1995, which triggered a criminal case over the abduction of the president's son. The case's outcome and punishment of the perpetrators was hindered by the amnesties granted by Mečiar. Kováč died of heart failure in 2016. In her social media post, current Slovak president Zuzana Čaputová wrote that "we will remember former President Michal Kováč as a real statesman".