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Slovaks Meet the New Bosses. They’re Not Much Different From the Old Bosses.

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — After an investigative journalist and his fiancee were gunned down last month, thousands of Slovakians took to the streets, week after week, demanding change and condemning the ruling party.

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MIROSLAVA GERMANOVA
and
MARC SANTORA, New York Times

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — After an investigative journalist and his fiancee were gunned down last month, thousands of Slovakians took to the streets, week after week, demanding change and condemning the ruling party.

The protests, the largest in the country since the Velvet Revolution in 1989, forced Prime Minister Robert Fico, Interior Minister Robert Kalinak and several other officials to resign.

But when President Andrej Kiska named a new government on Thursday, many of those who had railed against the corruption of top officials feared that the new boss was not much different from the old boss.

The government refused to call new elections, as demonstrators had demanded, and the same three-party coalition that governed under Fico will remain in power. The new prime minister, Peter Pellegrini, 42, is a close ally of Fico, who will return to parliament as the leader of the ruling SMER-SD party.

Kiska, a vocal critic of Fico who had to approve the new government, predicted that merely reshuffling the Cabinet would not restore the trust of the people.

“I believe that we all understand the changes in the government are not enough,” he said. “The main responsibility is changing the way of ruling.”

The other significant change was the appointment of Tomas Drucker, the minister of health, as the new interior minister, overseeing the police. It will fall to Drucker to lead the investigation into the killing of the journalist Jan Kuciak, 27, and his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, 27, which have rocked Slovakia’s political culture.

Kuciak had been investigating links between politicians and a notorious Italian organized crime syndicate, the ‘Ndrangheta, when he and Kusnirova were shot to death in their home. Police have said the killings appeared to be linked to his work.

Among other things, Kuciak was looking into how a young woman went from being the business partner of an alleged ‘Ndrangheta figure to being a senior adviser to Prime Minister Fico.

Her business partner, Antonino Vadala, was arrested in Slovakia last week on drug trafficking charges and could soon be extradited to Italy.

Kiska said the naming of a new Cabinet resulted directly from the killings, and public faith in government institutions would not be easily restored.

“You cannot react to the distrust and outrage of the public with yelling, arrogance or ignorance of suspicions of organized crime reaching to the top places in Slovak politics,” he said.

The new Cabinet — which also include new ministers of culture, justice and health — will seek the support of the Slovak parliament Friday, but the coalition has already said it would have enough votes to win approval.

Protest organizers, while disappointed that calls for early elections were not heeded, said they were canceling a demonstration in Bratislava planned for Friday.

“All of us together have been able to stand up for decent and fair Slovakia,” they said in statement. “The change has started and it’s unstoppable.”

Declaring that “decent citizens respect the constitution,” the organizers said it was time for lawmakers in parliament to take over. The group’s Facebook page was quickly flooded with messages of disappointment and frustration.

Students at several universities said they would carry out a silent march and light candles at a shrine set up in memory of Kuciak and Kusnirova in Bratislava’s SNP Square. Some people throughout the country, including Kusnirova’s mother, said they would continue the demonstrations.

“What happened in Slovakia in the past month was a political earthquake,” said Marian Lesko, an analyst with the group Let’s Stop the Corruption. “But after every earthquake, there are some aftershocks.”

It was a shame that the nationwide movement for better politics should stop so abruptly, he said, but there was little more that protesters could achieve legally by taking to the streets.

Still, Lesko said, “Slovakia hasn’t been this determined and decisive in a long time.”

Pellegrini, the former minister of education and speaker of the parliament, said a new Cabinet was the best way to restore the stability.

He said the killing of Kuciak and Kusnirova were an attack on democracy, and vowed that his government would do everything in its power to find those responsible.

“We will do everything to make Slovakia a successful country,” he said. “To make it a good place to live in and to make it a country we can be proud of.”

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