Igor Matovič

Igor Matovič was born in Trnava on 11 May 1973. In 1993, he began to study at the Faculty of Management at Comenius University, graduating in 1998. He founded a business in 1997 and worked as the chief executive of Trnava publishing house regionPRESS from 2002 to 2010. Matovič later transferred the business to his wife, Pavlína (née Repaska).[2][3] Agence France-Presse described him as an "eccentric self-made millionaire and former media boss" who had become "a media-savvy but unpredictable politician".[4]

In 2010, Matovič founded the Ordinary People (Obyčajní ľudia) civic movement, which was generally centre-right and emphasized anti-corruption. Matovič advertised the civic movement using free leaflets distributed by his family's press company.[3] Along with three other OĽaNO MPs, he first won election at the 2010 election on the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) list. He sat in the SaS caucus until February the following year, when he supported the opposition Smer's proposed restrictions on Multiple citizenship.[5] Matovič's opposition to the government's position led to SaS being dropped from the coalition. In 2011, Iveta Radičová's government fell apart, which led to new elections in 2012. Led by Matovič, Ordinary People was reconstituted into OĽaNO (Ordinary People and Independent Personalities), an independent political party. OĽaNO won 8.55% and 16 seats. He stayed in the opposition as he was unwilling to work with Smer-SD.[3]

As leader of OĽaNO, Matovič attracted attention by campaigning against corruption. To oppose parliamentary immunity, he parked his car on a pedestrian crossing and showed his parliamentary pass to police who tried to tow it;[6] to oppose corruption, he took a polygraph test stating that he had never accepted bribes.[7] However, Robert Fico accused Matovič of impropriety in effecting a fictitious sale of the regionPRESS business for 122 million Slovak koruna to employee Pavel Vandák, who supposedly got the money from an internal account. Matovič denies this.[3]

Matovič's party OĽaNO got the plurality of votes in the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election on 29 February 2020, winning 53 seats in the 150-member National Council with 25.02% of the vote.[4] Corruption was a major issue in the election, which helped Matovič, who had long positioned himself as an anti-corruption activist.[8] On 13 March, Matovič announced he had reached an agreement for a governing coalition with the other centrist and right-wing parties We Are Family, Freedom and Solidarity and For the People, though they had not agreed upon a common governing program. He did not disclose his picks for the new cabinet.[9] Matovič submitted his cabinet selection to President Zuzana Čaputová on 16 March; she accepted all of the appointments. The new cabinet's composition was revealed on 18 March and was sworn in on 21 March.[10][11][12]

In July 2020, Matovič admitted to plagiarizing his masters' thesis after an investigation from Denník N found that entire pages and charts were lifted from the sources. He said he would step down after all his election promises were fulfilled.[13] Comenius University in Bratislava confirmed the plagiarism of the master's thesis.[14]

Sociologist of the Bratislava Policy Institute, Michal Vašečka, stated that "Matovič has started to transform the anger of the society into a class war: city vs. countryside, educated vs. uneducated, common people vs. the elites." He suggested that it would result in political polarization.[15]

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