2023-10-01 07:37:00
The Slovaks went to the polls on Saturday September 30 for a legislative election closely observed by neighboring Ukraine. It was ultimately the Slovak populist party Smer-SD which won the game, according to the count of almost all the votes. This party, although placed second by two exit polls, campaigned on the promise of cutting aid to Ukraine.
The vote in this country of 5.4 million inhabitants, a member of the EU and NATO, is considered decisive in knowing whether Slovakia can stay on its pro-Western course or turn more towards Russia.
The party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico obtained 23.3% of the votes, ahead of the centrist Progressive Slovakia (PS) party, supported by 17.03% of voters, after the counting of 99.43% of the ballots. . The final results are expected Sunday morning.
“Bigger and bigger cutlets”
Slovak President Zuzana Caputova told AFP this week that she would entrust the formation of the next government to the leader of the winning party, regardless of her “personal preference” as a former member of Progressive Slovakia. Smer-SD said it would not comment on the vote until later on Sunday. Robert Fico carefully avoided reporters on election day.
The Smer-SD had promised during the election campaign to stop aid to neighboring Ukraine. During a stormy electoral campaign, marked by particularly high rates of online disinformation and which gave rise to several brawls between candidates, Robert Fico attacked the EU and NATO as well as to the LGBTQ minority. He also opposed any additional military aid to Ukraine as it fights the Russian invasion.
Robert Fico voted in a village northeast of Bratislava, accompanied by his mother. “Talking to my mother, I find that she has a lot of experience and common sense, and of course, she makes the best schnitzels,” Robert 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.
A necessary coalition with small parties
While casting his ballot in Bratislava, Mr Simecka said he would “accept the result of the election with humility”. The winner of the election will need help from smaller parties to form a majority coalition in the 150-seat parliament. The new government will replace that of 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.
The Slovak president said she would task the winner of the election with forming the next cabinet. The choice of coalition partners includes seven parties, according to the poll, entered Parliament. In addition to the two winners, they are Hlas-SD (15.43%), led by Peter Pellegrini, former vice-president of Smer-SD and successor to Mr. Fico as head of government in 2018, Olano ( 9.34%, center), the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH, 7.14%), Freedom and Solidarity (SaS, liberal, 5.64%) and the Slovak National Party (SNS, 5.8%), according to partial results.
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. Jan Kuciak revealed the existence of links between the Italian mafia and Fico’s government in his last article published posthumously.
Slovakia became independent in 1993, following a peaceful separation from the Czech Republic, after Czechoslovakia shook off four decades of communist rule in 1989.
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