Pavol Paška | |
---|---|
Speaker of the Slovak National Council | |
In office 4 April 2012 – 17 November 2014 |
|
President |
Ivan Gašparovič Andrej Kiska |
Preceded by | Pavol Hrušovský |
Succeeded by | Peter Pellegrini |
In office 4 July 2006 – 8 July 2010 |
|
President | Ivan Gašparovič |
Preceded by | Béla Bugár (Acting) |
Succeeded by | Richard Sulík |
Member of the Slovak National Council | |
Assumed office 15 October 2002 |
|
Personal details | |
Born |
Košice, Czechoslovakia |
23 February 1958
Political party | Direction – Social Democracy |
Pavol Paška (born 23 February 1958) is a Slovak politician who served as Speaker of the National Council of the Slovak Republic from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2014. He is a member of the Direction - Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party.
Paška was born in Košice on 23 February 1958. He graduated from the Faculty of Arts of the Comenius University in Bratislava in 1985. His study fields included Marxist-Leninist philosophy and aesthetics. Prior to his university studies he worked for the State Company Zdroj in Košice.
After finishing his study he worked at Education and Culture Centre in Košice and at Self-Administration Office and later Municipal District Administration KVP in Košice. Paška became active in the business sphere in 1992 before entering politics in 1999.
Paška was first elected as the deputy leader of Smer-SD, along with future minister of the interior Robert Kaliňák, at their annual congress in the western Slovak town of Hlohovec on 12 April 2003. He was re-elected as deputy chairman at the party's national congress in Trenčín on 30 September.
His party, Direction – Social Democracy, led by current Prime Minister Robert Fico, won the June 2006 parliamentary elections with 29.1% of the votes and formed a coalition with the People's Party - Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (ĽS-HZDS) and the Slovak National Party (SNS). Support for Direction – Social Democracy party after the elections rose even higher, oscillating in the summer 2007 opinion polls around 40%.
In the wake of the election, the new Slovak parliament elected Paška as its new speaker, with 98 out of 148 MPs present supporting the nomination. Parliament also elected three deputy speakers - Miroslav Číž from Smer, Anna Belousovová from the SNS party and Viliam Veteška from the HZDS. Paška said he "wanted consensus, cooperation, and respect to dominate in the new parliament".