One worry was about minority rights. The new minister, Pal Csaky, is an ethnic Hungarian, from an ethnic-Hungarian party in the new coalition. In particular, he declares that better relations with the Romanies, or gypsies, are his priority. There are worries about the estimated 800,000 Romanies in both parts of the former Czechoslovakia.
Nobody doubts that Romanies in both countries have a rotten time.
Many live in ramshackle ghettos, or in crude huts clustered higgledy-piggledy near the Tatra mountains. Politicians inflame the problem. The camp today is scarcely sign-posted, and used as a pig farm. The Slovaks, in contrast, spared their Romanies. Many were then resettled in towns on the Czech side.