New Mayor in Bratislava

Decision in Bratislava: Even before the municipal elections scheduled to take place in Slovakia on November 27, 2010, there has already been a first change: Bratislava will have a new mayor. This brings the era of the incumbent mayor, Andrej Durkovsky, to an end.

Bratislava Mayor Andrej Durkovsky to make way for former actress

The reason for the change at the top of Bratislava’s city hall: On Tuesday, the ruling center-right coalition, made up of four parties, joined with the Civic Conservative Party to nominate former actress Magdalena Vasaryova as their joint candidate for mayor of the Slovak capital. Civil engineer and entrepreneur Andrej Durkovsky, a representative of the Christian-oriented KDH, has therefore lost out to Vasaryova, now a member of the National Council. The new mayor of Bratislava’s political career to date: From 1990 to 1993, she served as ambassador to Austria for the then CSFR. Since 2005, Vasaryova has been a member of the economically liberal Slovak party SDKU-DS, the same party as Slovakia’s prime minister, Iveta Radicova.

One reason for the end of the Durkovsky era: criticism of holding multiple offices

Andrej Durkovsky had been mayor of Bratislava since 2002. Before that, he served for eight years as mayor of Bratislava’s Old Town. Since the last parliamentary elections in June 2010, Durkovsky has lost considerable popularity among the people of Bratislava . He was accused of not devoting himself fully to his duties as mayor of Bratislava because he also holds a seat in the National Council. Even his own party supports a law regulating the holding of multiple offices.