Parliamentary elections will be held in Slovakia on Saturday, where a vote will be taken between a pro-Western and a pro-Russian alternative. Forming a government after an election can be difficult.
Tomorrow, Saturday, parliamentary elections will be held in Slovakia, where there will be a tight struggle between the pro-Western and pro-Russian alternatives.
Even competition for the seat of the largest party is held by the pro-Russia party Robert Ficon led by Smer and pro-Western Michal Šimečka led by Progressive Slovakia (PS).
Politico newspaper monitoring According to Smer, Smer has been leading in support polls since the spring, but the party’s support has declined in the last few meters of the campaign. With the election day looming, Smer and PS are almost level in opinion polls with around 20 percent support.
Smer, led by Fico, is a national-conservative and left-wing populist party that opposes Ukraine’s armed support in the war against Russia.
PS, on the other hand, is a social liberal and pro-EU party. Party leader Šimečka, 39, is the vice-president of the European Parliament, and he advocates closer European cooperation and continued support for Ukraine.
Fico is a familiar name in Slovakia
Fico, 59, is the former Prime Minister of Slovakia from 2006-2010 and 2012-2018.
Fico, who started his political career as a communist in the 1980s, became a social democrat in the 1990s. During Fico’s previous terms as prime minister, Slovakia balanced and tried to maintain good relations with both the West and Russia.
Fico’s previous premiership ended in a political scandal that began with the 27-year-old journalist Ján Kucia too and the murder of his girlfriend. Before the murder, Kuciak had investigated the corruption of the Smer party and the party’s alleged connections with the Italian mafia.
The murder triggered widespread protests in the country, which eventually led to Fico’s resignation and by Peter Pellegrini rise to prime minister.
Pellegrini served as prime minister from 2018 to 2020, after which he left Smer and founded the more pro-Western Hlas party. Based on opinion polls, Hlas is emerging as the third largest party with around 15 percent support.
Fico wants to end arms aid to Ukraine
Fico, who is trying to return to power, has campaigned during the elections in a very pro-Russian manner and has spread Kremlin propaganda, according to which the cause of the war in Ukraine is Ukrainian “Nazis” and “fascists”.
Šimečka has campaigned saying that Fico’s rise to power would bring an ally within the EU to the Hungarian prime minister To Viktor Orbán.
Last week news agency AP in an interview, Fico said that no amount of weapons from Western countries will change the course of the war in Ukraine, so the EU and the United States should engage Ukraine and Russia in peace negotiations.
– Could someone explain to me why tens or hundreds of thousands of soldiers have to die on both sides of the conflict? Fico asked at his campaign meeting the other week.
– In any case, they have to sit down and find an agreement, because Russia will never leave Crimea or the territories it controls, so what is the use of this, Fico continued.
Fico has promised to end all Slovak arms aid to Ukraine, but Politico according to the estimate, the country has already given Ukraine almost all the arms aid it can give. However, under Fico’s leadership, Slovakia could, for example, make it difficult for other countries’ arms aid to flow to neighboring Ukraine.
Forming a board can be difficult
In addition to the three largest parties in Slovakia, there are numerous small parties with less than 10 percent support, which have power in forming the government.
Due to the highly fragmented party field, forming a majority government may prove difficult for both Smer and PS.
If Smer wins the elections, it is predicted that the party will need Hlas, who broke away from Smer, to join the government, which is not a given. In addition, Smer needs the right-wing populist Slovak People’s Party (SNS) and the extreme right-wing Republican as auxiliary parties, which push very EU-critical and pro-Russia policies.
The PS, on the other hand, would need help from the pro-Western minor parties in the party field to form a government. In Slovakia, parties must exceed a five percent vote threshold to get their candidates into parliament, which creates unpredictability in the election result.
Slovak governments have been unstable in recent years. In the last five years, the country has had five different prime ministers.