Is the Slovak president Zuzana Čaputová turning parliamentary democracy into an authoritarian presidential regime? No, that's not true: Slovak president Zuzana Čaputová is not instituting an authoritarian system.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) where it was published by @exotickyduch on May 15, 2023, under the title "The president is turning parliamentary democracy into an authoritarian regime." It opened:
The president has shown her true colors. The way she is creating not a 'byrocratic' (Slovak term for a temporary government of experts, not politicians, who have no political ambition in elections - Lead Stories' note), but a presidential government violates all the principles of parliamentary democracy, which are anchored in our Constitution.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue May 16 12:48:59 2023 UTC)
The video was originally posted on the official Youtube channel of Slovakia's main opposition party Smer - Socialna Demokracia. The faulty claim has been repeated by other party members, like Lubos Blaha, during his appearance in a political debate hosted by Slovak public service television RTVS, clips of which have found their way to TikTok.
Slovak president Zuzana Čaputová is appointing a new government after former Prime Minister Eduard Heger asked her to take away his credential to lead a government. The new government came to power on Monday, May 15, 2023, after the temporary government of Eduard Heger did not survive a corruption scandal and the PM voluntarily lost his mandate on Sunday, May 7, 2023.
It is within the constitutional duties of the president to appoint a "byrocratic government" as a way of crisis management when the parliament is so politically fragmented, that it cannot support a new government, constitutional law expert Vincent Bujnak told the Slovak daily newspaper Dennik N.
