SLOVAKIA’S POPULIST PARTY OPPOSED TO UKRAINE AID GRABS VICTORY

Sun 01 October 2023:

Results from Slovakia’s election on Sunday showed that the populist SMER-SSD party, led by former prime minister Robert Fico, had won.

Fico is the leader of a populist party that has criticized the EU and NATO and promised to halt providing Ukraine with military assistance.

The Smer-SD party scored 23.3%, beating the centrist Progressive Slovakia on 17%, with almost all votes counted. Previously, two exit polls had indicated that Progressive Slovakia would be the winner.

PRO-RUSSIAN FORMER PRIME MINISTER AND PRO-WESTERN LIBERALS COMPETE FOR VOTES IN SLOVAKIA

If Fico successfully creates a majority coalition, he will lead the European nation for the fourth time.

“Fico is a technician of power, by far the best in Slovakia. He does not have a counterpart at the moment,” said sociologist Michal Vasecka from the Bratislava Policy Institute.

“Fico is always following opinion polls, understands what is happening” in society, he added.

Saturday’s vote was a test for the small Eastern European country’s support for neighbouring Ukraine in its war with Russia.

The 59-year-old Fico has promised that Slovakia, one of Europe’s biggest donors to Ukraine as a share of its gross domestic product (GDP), will not send “a single round of ammunition” to Ukraine and has called for better relations with Russia.

A country of 5.5 million people formed in 1993 after the dissolution of Czechoslovakia has been a loyal ally of Ukraine since Russia invaded last February, donating armaments and opening its borders to refugees fleeing the conflict.

With no party gaining an outright majority, the party with the highest proportion of the vote has the first opportunity to form a coalition, and the makeup of any government is likely to be dependent on a half-dozen smaller parties.

Public dissatisfaction

“Fico benefited from all that anxiety brought by the (coronavirus) pandemic and the (Ukraine) war, by the anger spreading in Slovakia in the past three years, and fueling that anger,” sociologist Michal Vasecka was cited by the Reuters news agency as saying.

Slovakia has the eurozone’s highest inflation rate of 10% and a financially depleted health system.

Fico has also gained supporters amid public dissatisfaction with the previous ruling coalition. The center-right government collapsed last year, triggering early elections.

Analysts predict a Fico government could radically change Slovakia’s foreign policy to resemble that of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, straining a fragile unity in the EU and NATO on opposing Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Fico’s views reflect traditionally warm sentiments towards Russia among many Slovaks.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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