FICO FIRES ENVIRONMENT MINISTER, BUT IT'S NO CLEANUP

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 BRATISLAVA 000369 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT FOR EUR/CE J. MOORE E.O. 12958: CLASSIFIED BY CHARGE D'AFFAIRES KEITH A. EDDINS, FOR REASONS 1.4B TAGS: SENV PREL ECON KCOR LO SUBJECT: FICO FIRES ENVIRONMENT MINISTER, BUT IT'S NO CLEANUP REF: BRATISLAVA 365 BRATISLAVA 00000369 001.2 OF 002 Summary -------------- ¶1. (C) On Wednesday, PM Robert Fico fired his Minister of Environment over a public procurement scandal involving the disposal of coal ash. At the press conference announcing the dismissal, he said that he would take the ministry away from junior coalition partner, which has caused the government one embarrassment after another. While this may look like a long-overdue cleanup of arguably the most corrupt ministry, we believe it is more likely politics as usual. Fico has replaced nine ministers now, most of them for corruption, but no one has been prosecuted, and the mechanics of cronyism remain firmly in place. We have yet to be convinced that Fico is targeting the spoils system by which coalition partners, including senior partner Smer, exercise their power. End summary. Firing Tursky: Insult and Injury -------------- ¶2. (U) On August 19, PM Robert Fico announced at a press conference that he would ask President Ivan Gasparovic to recall Minister of Environment Viliam Tursky. The announcement followed a scandal over the ministry's EUR 85 million contract for disposal of coal ash from state power plants; the winner, Esco, offered a bid that was reportedly EUR 27 million higher than at least one other bid. Esco is widely known as a company with close ties to Slovak National Party (SNS) party sponsors. This scandal followed close on the heels of an as yet unresolved controversy over the sale of CO2 emission allocations at below-market prices (reftel),allegedly costing the state over EUR 60 million. ¶3. (U) In a breathtaking slap at the SNS and its chairman, Jan Slota, Fico said he would not accept further environment nominees from SNS because of its "repeatedly demonstrated inability" to nominate people "capable of dealing responsibly with the decision-making processes" in the ministry. Just in case anyone listening might not have caught the political implications of the move, Fico spelled them out in very clear--even confrontational--terms. He understands, he said, that his move violates the terms of the government coalition agreement, and that it risked SNS's leaving the coalition. He said that if SNS were to do that, any discussion of its inclusion in a future government would be impossible. ¶4. (U) Tursky's is the first case in the brief history of Slovakia in which a head of government has denied a coalition party its agreed-upon prerogative to name and fire its ministers. It is hardly the first time that a Fico minister has been fired for unacceptably egregious cronyism. Tursky is the ninth Fico cabinet member to have been replaced, and the third agriculture minister within little more than a year. A majority of these dismissals has resulted from embarrassing public scandals over suspicious public procurements. None of them has been followed by indictment or prosecution. ¶5. (U) The Tursky case has eclipsed for the moment the anticipated firing of Minister of Agriculture Stanislav Becik, who has been threatened by HZDS party leader Vladimir Meciar for allowing the top management of the lucrative and allegedly corrupt state forestry companies to fall out of HZDS hands. His recall by Meciar was widely expected this week, but Fico had struck a bellicose pose on this appointment as well, saying Becik is a good minister, and that he had no interest in appointing Peter Baco, Becik's rumored replacement. Comment: New Political Assertiveness, or Business as Usual? -------------- -------------- ¶6. (C) While Tursky's firing may strike the casual observer as a cleanup of one of the darker corners of the government, from here it looks more like politics as usual. SNS is the most egregiously corrupt and self-serving of the three coalition partners, and what Fico appears to object to is not so much the fact of SNS ministers' cronyism as their sheer ham-fisted clumsiness, which rarely leaves more than a week's respite between banner headlines. Fico routinely defends the government against all accusations, generally seeing any questioning of a particular deal as a political attack, but he finds himself called to the microphones far too frequently by SNS's flagrancy and ineptitude. Certainly the way in which Fico has chosen to call out SNS publicly indicates that he holds all the political cards and wants everyone, including the electorate, to know it. ¶7. (C) But there is another factor perhaps more important to BRATISLAVA 00000369 002.2 OF 002 understanding the ease with which ministers--particularly those nominated by the junior coalition partners--are dismissed. Fico appears to consider the various ministries as the private fiefdoms of the political parties that constitute the coalition. He often takes a "not my problem" stance when confronted with a scandal coming from an SNS or HZDS ministry, as if they were not accountable to him. Further, the parties have often placed their deal-makers several layers deep beneath the minister(sometimes not even on the official rolls of the ministry),so that ministers may come and go without interrupting the continuity of business operations between the ministry and the political party chiefs. ¶8. (C) This is particularly true in the case of the Ministry of Environment, who appears to be accountable only to Slota, and who is given no control over deals performed by his titular lieutenants. An extensive network of former defense and military intelligence officials (with no background in environmental issues) seems to report directly to Slota, and we understand that they present done deals to the Minister for signature, with instructions to sign or resign. Only one member of this network, Pavol Tehlar, who was directly responsible for the coal ash contract, has been fired along with Tursky. We will come to think of Tursky's dismissal, and Fico's assertion of political supremacy, as a good sign only if other heads follow his into the basket.