The Democrats (, D), during 2018 – 2023 known as TOGETHER – Civic Democracy () and later the Blue Coalition (, MK), is a Slovak political party founded in 2018 by Miroslav Beblavý. The party has changed leadership multiple times and is led by the former prime minister of Slovakia Eduard Heger since 7 March 2023.
Ideology
TOGETHER – Civic Democracy was a centre-right conservative liberal and liberal conservative party. SPOLU was placed as centrist or centre-right on the political spectrum. The current leader of the party Eduard Heger presents the party as centrist, pro-European, pro-NATO and green.
History
The creation of SPOLU was announced on 17 November 2017, by former under-secretary of Sieť Miroslav Beblavý, who left the party in protest of its decision to join the Smer-led government, and former under-secretary of liberal SaS Jozef Mihál.
The party presents itself as a centre-right, pro-European party focusing on a modern economy, accessible healthcare and a functional educational system.
The Fonding Council of SPOLU consists of independent MPs of the National Council of the Slovak Republic and former members of Sieť, SaS and OĽaNO: Oto Žarnay, Jozef Mihál, Simona Petrík, Viera Dubačová, Miroslav Beblavý, Katarína Macháčková and lawyer Pavel Nechala of Transparency International.
The party's founding congress was held on 14 April 2018 in Poprad. Miroslav Beblavý was elected as its leader. Katarína Macháčková and Jozef Mihál were elected as Deputy leaders, with the third Deputy leader being Erik Baláž, founder of environmentalist campaign We are the forest, and recipient of the White Crow 2017 award for the fight against corruption.
In the 2020 Slovak parliamentary election TOGETHER joined the socially liberal party Progressive Slovakia with which they created a coalition but narrowly failed to get into the parliament because of TOGETHER's very low popularity. After this Beblavý resigned from his leadership position.
In early 2023 after the crisis of Cabinet of Eduard Heger, the then-leader of the party Miroslav Kollár met with the former Slovak Prime minister Mikuláš Dzurinda with whom he planned to co-operate during the following parliamentary elections. Dzurinda had originally planned to create his own liberal-conservative political force "The Blues – European People's Party", but the announcement of early elections changed his plans.
On 27 January 2023, after the announcement of a snap election, Dzurinda presented the Blue Coalition, thereby returning to Slovak politics after leaving it 10 years ago. At a press conference, Dzurinda presented his project, with which he wants to fight "for a European Slovakia", wants to be "a reasonable alternative to the mafia and chaos" and "for a modern and educated Slovakia". He called the Blue Coalition his new political home. Dzurinda's press conference was attended by former members of the SDKÚ-DS and leader of the SPOLU party Miroslav Kollár. Both the leader of ODS and the leader of Democrats of Slovakia, minor centre-right parties which cooperated with SPOLU, announced their support for the Blue Coalition.
Because of disagreements with Kollár, Dzurinda left the project shortly after and founded his own The Blues – European Slovakia party. Then then-Prime Minister of Slovakia Eduard Heger assumed the leadership of the party and the party was renamed to Democrats.
Criticism
The leader of the Christian Democratic Movement criticized Dzurinda's "dream" of uniting the KDH, SaS and PS in the elections, saying that the "non-aggression pact" with the Progressives in the last elections brought damage to the party.