Ivan Gasparovic
Ivan Gasparovic and his wife Silvia
Ivan Gašparovič (born March 27 1941), Slovak politician and law professor, was elected President of Slovakia on April 17 2004. He is expected to take office on June 15, 2004.
Ivan's father, Vladimir Gašparović, was born near Rijeka, Croatia when his family emigrated to Czechoslovakia at the end of World War I. Vladimir was a teacher at a gymnasium (secondary school) in Bratislava, and at one point its headmaster. His son Ivan studied law at the Law Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava, which is the central university in Slovakia.
He worked in the District Prosecutor's Office of the district of Martin, then became a Prosecutor at the Municipal Prosecutor's Office of Bratislava. In 1968 he joined the Communist Party of Slovakia to support Alexander Dubcek's reforms, but he was deprived of his party membership after the Warsaw Pact invasion in Czechoslovakia in August 1968 (see History of Czechoslovakia).
From 1968 to 1990 Gašparovič was a teacher at the Department of Criminal Law, Criminology and Criminological Practice at the Law Faculty of the Comenius University in Bratislava. In February 1990 he became prorector (vice-chancellor) of Comenius University. After the fall of the Communist regime in the Velvet Revolution he became prosecutor-general of Czechoslovakia, based in Prague. He was briefly Vice-President of the Legislative Council of Czechoslovakia, before Slovakia seceded from Czechoslovakia in 1992.
From 1992 to 2002 Gašparovič a member of the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (MDS), the party led by the Slovak nationalist leader VladimÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂr Mečiar. He was an MDS member of the Slovak parliament, the Slovak National Council, first within Czechoslovakia then in independent Slovakia. From 1992 to 1998 he was Speaker of the Parliament. He was one of the authors of the Constitution of Slovakia.
Gašparovič left the MDS, together with some other members, a short time before the September 2002 parliamentary elections, because of internal disputes within the party, or as he puts it: "in protest against the undemocratic way the party is led by VladimÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂr Mečiar." After leaving the MDS, Gašparovič sat as an independent MP. In July 2002 he founded the Movement for Democracy, a new opposition party, but in the September 2002 elections his party failed to win enough votes to get seats in the parliament. He then returned to the Law Faculty of the Comenius University.
In April 2004 Gašparovič ran for President against his former leader Mečiar, who was attempting to make a comback after losing the 2002 legislative elections. Although Mečiar won more votes than Gašparovič in the first round, he did not win a majority. In the second round, Gašparovič polled nearly 60 percent of the vote after recieving the support of the eliminated candidates (see Slovakia presidential election, 2004).
In 1964, Gašparovič married Silvia BenÃÂÃÂÃÂÃÂkovÃÂÃÂÃÂá, with whom he has two children. In his private life, he is a fan of ice hockey, the national sport of Slovakia. He was one of the leaders of the hockey club Slovan CHZJD (later called HC Slovan Bratislava). He has been vice-president of the International Commission of the Czechoslovak Ice Hockey Union and vice-president of the hockey team of the sports unit Slovan Bratislava.