What Slovakia is writing about: The transport minister wants to lead Bratislava. Danko added a list of tenders to his call for Taraba to resign

Candidate lists for the combined municipal and regional elections closed at midnight on Tuesday, and the first names began to be published on Wednesday. Transport Minister Jozef Ráž will also run for mayor of Bratislava, and Interior Ministry state secretary Michal Kaliňák will run for mayor of Medzilaborce. Meanwhile, SNS leader Andrej Danko added a video with a list of tenders he criticises the minister for to his call for Tomáš Taraba to leave the environment ministry.

The candidate lists have closed, with the transport minister entering the Bratislava race

Candidates could submit their nomination lists no later than 60 days before the election, that is, by Tuesday midnight. The combined elections for municipal self-government bodies and regional self-government bodies will take place on Saturday, 24 October. The lists published by the municipalities on Wednesday are still preliminary and unofficial; election commissions must still register the candidates, no later than 45 days before the election. STVR ↗

In Bratislava, six candidates submitted nomination papers for mayor, and 220 people are competing for 45 seats in the city council. Two-term mayor Matúš Vallo is defending the post for the Team Bratislava, Progressive Slovakia, SaS and Democrats coalition, while Transport Minister Jozef Ráž registered as an independent candidate. Also running are city and regional councillor Martin Winkler for the Dunaj party, Pirate Party chairwoman Zuzana Šubová, Miroslav Heredoš for the Patriotic Bloc, and Ľubomír Geci for MySlovensko. Long-time mayor of Karlova Ves Dana Čahojová withdrew from the race a day before the deadline. STVR ↗

From that same day, each newsroom picked something different. STVR and TASR treated it as a series of dry counts by cities and regions. Hospodárske noviny opened a separate election section with a text about Interior Ministry state secretary Michal Kaliňák, who is running for Hlas as mayor of Medzilaborce and will have four rivals. Aktuality put a Prešov record in its headline. The common denominator, which none of them has named yet, is how many people from government posts are looking for a place in local government, whether it is a minister, a state secretary, or the district chairman of Hlas, whom the coalition has fielded against the Bratislava regional governor and whom we wrote about in yesterday's edition. Hospodárske noviny ↗ Aktuality.sk ↗

Prešov has eleven names, Nitra region three

The greatest interest in the governor's post is in the Prešov region, where eleven people filed nomination papers and 476 candidates are seeking seats in the regional assembly. The fewest are in the Nitra region, where there are three. In the Banská Bystrica region, seven candidates filed, five for parties and movements and two independents; unlike other municipalities, the regional office did not publish their names. The current chairman, Ondrej Lunter, publicly announced his candidacy there as an independent, along with Roman Malatinec for the Party of the Countryside and Republika deputy chairman Miroslav Suja. STVR ↗ TASR ↗

In Košice, eight people are running for mayor and 274 candidates are competing for 51 council seats. In Trnava and Trenčín, it is already certain that a new face will lead the city, as the current mayors Peter Bročka and Richard Rybníček are not running. The opposite extreme is Malacky, where only one person, current mayor Juraj Říha, submitted a mayoral nomination. TASR ↗ Aktuality.sk ↗ SITA ↗

Danko added a list of tenders to the call for Taraba to leave

SNS's conflict with its own minister shifted on Wednesday evening from a personnel dispute to accusations. Tomáš Taraba had previously said that he would not leave the environment ministry on 15 September and that state secretary Filip Kuffa would not replace him. Andrej Danko responded with a video on social media in which he referred to a May agreement that if relations with the nominating party did not improve, Taraba would leave on his own. "Mr Taraba should never have been minister," said the nationalist party leader in it. Štandard ↗

In the same video, Danko listed what he criticises the minister for: a Water Management Construction tender worth EUR 500 million, repairs to Gabčíkovo turbines for EUR 137 million, sediment cleanup for the Slovak Water Management Enterprise involving an Italian company, legal contracts worth EUR 2 million for Taraba's neighbour, and contracts for PR agencies linked to relatives of former MP Romana Tabaková. These are Danko's claims, not findings of a supervisory body, and Taraba rejects them. The SNS leader also claims that Taraba applied to join the party himself in the spring and was not accepted because of his behaviour and intelligence contacts, which he did not specify. Štandard ↗ SME ↗

Newsrooms diverged on what they made of the video. Štandard presented it as a factual overview of Danko's objections and added that the SNS leader wants to sit down with the minister and reach an agreement. SME turned it into a commentary on how autocracy is being built with Danko and Huliak. According to a political scientist quoted by SITA, the prime minister has formal room to broker an agreement, but the coalition agreement narrows it, and Taraba's possible return to the parliamentary benches would be sensitive for the coalition. SME ↗ SITA ↗

Šutaj Eštok asks journalists whether they are not ashamed

Marcela Martonová resigned from the supervisory board of Energetika Slovensko a day after the economy ministry led by Denisa Saková defended her nomination in a press release. According to the ministry, she said the reason was the media attention surrounding her and a desire not to polarise society. After the government meeting, Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok said he had never seen her and asked journalists whether they were not ashamed of the lynching they, in his view, subjected her to. He also objected to her being described as a beautician, saying she is the owner of a company. To reporters from Korzár, who visited her on Monday, she said she could not speak to them because she had a client in front of her. Pravda ↗ Denník N ↗

The core of the dispute is the suspicion of whether the nomination could have been connected to how her husband handled complaints against the interior minister. The ministry and the minister both deny this. Denník N recalls that Martonová's husband, investigator Mikuláš Marton, has already three times rejected the criminal complaint filed by the Zastavme korupciu Foundation against the interior minister over his foreign holiday, and that the prosecution is already dealing with his possible conflict of interest. The minister described this connection as absurd and as hyenism. In its morning briefing, SME opened another polemic that is not directly related to the case: Prime Minister Robert Fico criticises the prosecution for releasing an official charged in the mobile testing sites case from custody, even though he did not criticise the same procedure in the case of Tibor Gašpar. Denník N ↗ SME ↗

The opposition is already arguing about 2027

While the coalition is dealing with its own disputes, the opposition has opened a dispute over post-election cooperation, more than a year before the parliamentary election. Michal Šipoš, chairman of the Slovensko and Za ľudí parliamentary group, told TASR TV that the movement's goal is a result that makes it impossible to form a government without it, and that talk that it cannot cooperate with others, in his view, is fading away. He was reacting to the rejection by Progressive Slovakia and SaS of a government with Igor Matovič's movement. Hospodárske noviny ↗ Pravda ↗

Under the radar

Eight weeks before the election, SME reported a finding that directly concerns the Košice region. Government auditors and inspectors from the ministry of investments are demanding that eurobus return a EUR 38 million EU subsidy used to buy 177 buses for intercity and city routes in the region. The reason, they say, is a conflict of interest: the company bought the buses from a firm whose owner is known to Martin Sojka, vice-chairman of its board. He is indicted together with Košice regional governor Rastislav Trnka in the Valentín case, which concerns the purchase of salt spreaders for the regional road authority. Eurobus rejects the findings, and any repayment of the subsidy could, through higher payments, hit the region itself. SME ↗

The second thing that almost went unnoticed: the Culture Ministry led by Martina Šimkovičová awarded grants to Rainbow Pride Bratislava and the Inakosti Film Festival, for the first time during this government's entire term. Since 2024, the minister has repeatedly said that LGBTI+ organisations would not get a single cent from her ministry. Pride received EUR 12,000 out of the requested EUR 20,000, and the festival received the full requested EUR 20,000, following the recommendation of an expert commission. The information about the support reached Pride five days after the event took place; the contract only entered into force on 18 August. SME ↗ Refresher ↗

What hotinfo is watching

Illustrative photo: Primate's Palace in Bratislava, the seat of the mayor of the capital. Author Pymouss, licence CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.