Heger

The departed but mostly unlamented coalition government, the first version of which was pieced together in February 2020 by four parties in a push to unseat Fico's Smer party following eight years of increasing authoritarianism and corruption, certainly wasn't helped by circumstances.

Slovakia signed an intergovernmental agreement on the provision of military equipment, effectively jets, with Ukraine on March 17, despite threats from Russia.

"Giving up is not a solution. It's what the mafia wants," Heger wrote on social media soon after, employing a term that Matovič's OĽaNO often uses to refer to previous governments led by Robert Fico's Smer party.

Since then, he has strived to make amends. In early April, he joined the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, on her trip to Ukraine's capital and announced that Slovakia would hand over its Soviet-era air defence system to the country.

With coalition-wide negotiations ongoing, Heger called on his political partners to "not succumb to anger" and "built a culture of respect" between each other. "I am convinced that the key to change is not banging our fists on the table… but showing each other respect and decisiveness," he wrote on social media.