New Year’s Address by the President of the Slovak Republic Ivan Gašparovič

Dear fellow citizens,

it is for the third time already that my address on New Year’s Day is brought to you on television and radio and again I am wishing you the best of health, luck and happiness both in your professional and personal life. May the New Year bring more joy into your life than the last one.

There has been much change in the last year, as there has been in the last decade. In many respects, this change was for the better.
We have come to live with more freedom and less fear. Yet we seem to have become more estranged and oblivious to one another. Fortunately, the time around Christmas and New Year’s Day has retained its charm as well as its way of bringing people closer together. For providing a warm heart and home, we need to extend a special word of thanks to those who keep watching over us all our lives with their love and caring attention – our mothers, grandmothers and spouses.

Family, kinship, nation, Slovakia. Four words, four values that we hold in the highest respect. I have no doubt that you do too. From a historical perspective, it was a long struggle before our nation attained statehood, giving us the present-day independent and sovereign Slovak Republic. And today we commemorate the day of its coming into existence as well as its 15th anniversary. And on this occasion we rightly may ask ourselves: how does our country measure up against the image we initially had in mind? And what was that image like?
Some may say we have done well, some may claim the opposite. And there will certainly be many to say that it is a mixed bag. However, I have a good feeling about the distance that we have covered in our economy.
Still, we are dissatisfied, and rightly so, with the level of social security, the quality of health care and education, the state of the judiciary as well as the amount of care and attention that our senior citizens and young people are getting. Despite all of that, as the saying goes – we have managed to get the ball rolling in every area that has been a cause of concern.

And we should do our utmost to keep that ball rolling, so that it does not become a stumbling block further down the road, causing unnecessary damage. In particular, this time around.
So that partisan interests do not get ahead of the interests of the people living in this state. So that we stay clear of the means and methods that we already chose to reject and leave behind. The political culture of our country has been formed for more than the fifteen years of its existence.

It has to do with the continuous interchange that goes on between the people and their elected representatives, between the constitutional institutions and the political parties and speaking in my official capacity, I call on every single individual – let your conduct and actions be guided in the name of truth, decency and respect for the opinions of others.

I call on the political parties to act out their political rivalry in a fair manner and to confine it to the benches of the Parliament.
Slovakia is facing new political, economic and social challenges. Let us direct our focus on these challenges, rather than on politicking and bickering.

There will always be a need to have a good and well-governed state. It can be compared to the roof of a home. It can be compared to the table that we share and at which the closest of kin are seated. A good tradition in Slovakia has always been to set an empty place at our tables for every meal from Christmas Eve supper until Three Kings’ Day.
This has been done out of respect for those, who were unable to come or who were no longer with us... I would wish for each individual in society to embrace this principle of heartfelt human compassion and respect for people as a sign of our civic, social, moral and mainly cultural and human coming of age.
For without reaching this degree of maturity, we may hardly expect to find good laws and justice in society, decency and morality in politics and the economy or even a dignified life.
The state is shared by us all, dear citizens, every single one of us is a constituent element. And its strength – as the historical lesson of King Svatopluk has taught us – is derived from us standing united. If we choose to drift apart for no good reason, if we break the proverbial twigs of King Svatopluk, we will weaken ourselves – that is my New Year’s message to all political parties campaigning for your votes!

Dear fellow citizens, I am sure you will all agree that we cannot expect someone else to do something that each of us has to do on their own.
Both, as a person and a citizen. And that is to remain under any circumstances considerate as a person and responsible as a citizen. The world and life itself are still a long way from what we may imagine or wish for them to be.

Still, as a citizen of Slovakia, I am filled with a sense of pride and accomplishment that as a nation and a state, we managed to overcome the barriers that stood in our way. When we joined the European Union on 1 May 2004, it was as if all our windows had come open wide on that day.
Just a few days back, on 21 December last year, our doors finally came wide open as well with our accession to the Schengen Area – the doors that we share with our neighbours and with the rest of Europe that has come together in integration.

I wish to highlight that the Slovaks have always been and felt as an organic part of Europe. We see Europe as the cradle of our culture and we see Slovakia as our home, our homeland, our sovereign state.

We can be proud that, since its coming into existence, it has taken the Slovak Republic a relatively brief period of time to become a modern European country promoting shared values. We are a country that, by way of its diplomatic engagement as well as by its activities in security, has been actively shouldering responsibility for people living in various war-torn areas of the world.
Being involved in global decision-making processes is a major moral challenge as well as a source of satisfaction with respect to the 15 years of our existence. It reaffirms that we have matured politically and that, in terms of morality and values, we are firmly embedded in the community of democratic nations.

There is another important point to be noted on this day. A few days back, we commemorated the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the Slovak Ecclesiastical Province – an ecclesiastical administrative jurisdiction of the Roman Catholic Church in Slovakia.
I am making this point because this historic fact has helped us considerably in choosing to go down the road of independence and sovereignty on our territory, the road towards the Slovak Republic attaining statehood.

In order for us to not turn a blind eye to the respect for others and for our homeland, we must find a way to come together. Because it is only by coming together, by strengthening our state, that we will be able to tear down the walls that separate us.
Walls that our forefathers wanted to wish away, wall that we, our children and our grand-children should want to wish away.

As the President of the Slovak Republic, I have high regard for one particular trait of the Slovaks and that is our ability to stand out in a good way among the competing European nations. If we manage to couple this trait with more creativity and a more pro-active approach to life, if we support solutions aimed at improving our quality of life, I truly believe we can turn Slovakia into a marvellous home.
This is my sincere wish for all of us living in Slovakia, creating values. Together, let us reject extremism, radicalism and xenophobia and let us cherish the peace and tranquillity that the Slovak Republic has enjoyed for the past 15 years.

Dear fellow citizens,
if, on this special day and in conjunction with the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Slovak Republic, I made a point to remind us of what unites family, kin, nation and nationalities into a single state and what makes us a part of the European community as a state, I have done so in order point your attention to something that we all seem to be lacking to some degree – good people-to-people relations, heartfelt human dignity and generosity. In a word, caring about others.

In the New Year, I wish for all of you to meet a good, generous and kind-hearted person every single day. And may you find joy in your life.

I wish for the Slovak Republic to always have hard-working and creative individuals as a strong and sound backbone. And may we all also contribute our human touch to our prosperous future.

And for the new, dear fellow citizens, I wish you, as always, the best of health, happiness and Godspeed.