2023-09-30 11:33:00
Slovak voters are voting on Saturday for a legislative election which promises to be close and decisive for their support for Ukraine, after a campaign marked by disinformation.
Voting in this country of 5.4 million inhabitants, a member of the EU and NATO, will end at 8:00 p.m. GMT, with exit polls expected shortly after, while the final results are expected on Sunday morning.
Daniela Vongrajova, a voter from Bratislava, voted for change because “political culture and behavior have fallen very low.”
“And I also think that our children deserve a dignified future,” she told AFP.
Victory will be between the left-wing Smer-SD party of former populist Prime Minister Robert Fico and the centrist progressive Slovakia party of Michal Simecka, vice-president of the European Parliament, both credited with around 20% each in the surveys.
Any election winner will require help from other parties to achieve a majority in the 150-seat parliament.
The new government will replace the center-right coalition in power since 2020, which has changed three times in three years and which has provided considerable military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Eliska Spisakova said she voted for Smer, “the natural choice of the working poor, people like me”. “Progressive Slovakia is not interested in people, only in gays, in the legalization of drugs, in Ukrainians and in migrants,” this 29-year-old justice employee told AFP after voting in a district office. capital city.
According to independent political analyst Grigorij Meseznikov the vote will determine Slovakia’s direction “in terms of foreign policy, defense and security, but also… the future of democracy”.
During a heated electoral campaign which gave rise to several brawls between candidates, Mr. Fico attacked the EU and NATO as well as the LGBTQ minority.
He also opposed any additional military aid to Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion.
Mr. Fico voted in a village northeast of Bratislava, accompanied by his mother.
Larger cutlets
“Talking to my mother, I find that she has a lot of experience and common sense, and of course, she makes the best schnitzels,” Mr. Fico said in a video posted on Facebook.
He stressed that he wanted a Slovakia without “amateurs and inexperienced blunderers who lead us into adventures such as immigration and war.”
“And I would like the schnitzels in Slovakia to be bigger and bigger and not smaller and smaller,” he added.
Mr Simecka, meanwhile, urged Slovaks to “elect the future” and promised to rid the country of the “past”, referring to Mr Fico’s three terms as prime minister.
Voting in a school in Bratislava, he hoped that whatever future government “will continue to support Ukraine.”
Slovakia became independent in 1993, following a peaceful separation from the Czech Republic, after Czechoslovakia shook off four decades of communist rule in 1989.
Although many voters have experienced this Moscow-backed regime, many of them will vote for populists.
Analyzes have shown that half of the population is inclined to believe disinformation, widely disseminated by the Kremlin.
“Some people think that peace can be achieved by stopping all aid to Ukraine, and that’s where I disagree,” Zuzana Caputova, president of Slovakia, told AFP.
On Saturday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Slovakia “for its support to Ukraine” on Telegram, after meeting the Slovak Defense Minister in Kiev.
Same level
Ms Caputova said she would task the winner of the election with forming the next cabinet.
The choice of coalition partners is wide, since 11 parties could enter Parliament.
Mr Fico is expected to court Hlas-SD, led by Peter Pellegrini, former vice-president of Smer-SD and Mr Fico’s successor as head of government in 2018.
Hlas-SD was born in 2020 from a split within Smer that occurred two years after Mr. Fico’s departure from the post of Prime Minister following the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée.
Mr. Kuciak revealed the existence of links between the Italian mafia and the Fico government in his last article published posthumously.
Also opposed to aid to Ukraine, Mr. Fico’s other potential partners are the Republic (far right) and the Slovak National Party (SNS) with which he had already governed twice.
Progressive Slovakia could turn to the parties in the outgoing center-right coalition, namely Sme Rodina, the liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) party and the centrist For the People party.
09/30/2023 15:51:38 – Bratislava (AFP) – © 2023 AFP
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