Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[locked_out]

Is there any chance of a PS-led government? Or does it seem like there will be some unwieldy SMER-led coalition?

[Estrella]

Is there any chance of a PS-led government? Or does it seem like there will be some unwieldy SMER-led coalition?

PS would need Hlas and probably also Sme rodina for a majority, and while it's not impossible that they get together, both of them would be more comfortable in a coalition with Smer. Tbh all these calculations remind me of 2016, when an anti-Smer coalition would have been possible but it would have been so unwieldy that Smer managed to get two previously very clearly anti-Smer parties on its side anyway. On the numbers above, Smer+Hlas+SNS+Sme rodina gets a bare majority without involving Republika, which Hlas would still rather avoid.

[CumbrianLefty]

Smer fell to the low teens at one point, what is driving their comeback?

[Estrella]

Smer fell to the low teens at one point, what is driving their comeback?

Well, given the unpopularity of Matovič/Heger, a lot of voters were always bound to return to that side of politics. The reason why they're now switching from Hlas to Smer is that while Fico is less personally popular than Pellegrini, he's a much better campaigner. He has a very, er, charismatic personality (he's been Slovakia's most loved and most hated politician for as long as I remember) and his weekly press conferences full of rants about liberals, EU, Matovič etc get tens of thousands of views. Posters wisely leave out his face and take advantage of the devil-you-know-ness of the Smer brand to talk about restoring order, social security, things like that.

Fico is also a better ideological fit than Pellegrini for populist/rural/poor/older voters. Despite being a Smer splinter and likely ending up in a coalition with Fico, Hlas is pro-EU, pro-NATO and not too socially conservative by Slovak standards. With their centre-left-moderate-hero-let's-just-all-get-along schtick, Hlas is more like a tribute act to the Party of Civic Understanding (and like Schuster, I can imagine Pellegrini being elected President).

Also, to put Smer's recovery in perspective, they're polling about 2% above their 2020 result. What we might call the (broadly defined) nationalist-populist camp is hardly doing better. If you try adding up the results of such parties in each election, you get something like this:

1994: HZDS+ZRS+SNS+KSS+KSÚ = 52.1%
1998: HZDS+SNS+KSS+ZRS = 40.2% (f/ck off and die Mečiar)
2002: HZDS+Smer+KSS+PSNS+SNS+HZD+ZRS = 50.2% (backlash to Dzurinda, still reelected)
2006: Smer+SNS+HZDS+KSS+HZD = 54.2% (f/ck off and die Dzurinda)
2010: Smer+SNS+HZDS+ĽSNS+KSS = 46.3% (Fico is popular, his partners aren't)
2012: Smer+SNS+ĽSNS+HZDS+KSS+NaS = 52.8% (peak of Fico's popularity)
2016: Smer+SNS+ĽSNS+Sme rodina = 51.5% (backlash to Fico but nationalists benefit)
2020: Smer+Sme rodina+ĽSNS+SNS+Vlasť = 40.6% (f/ck off and die Fico)
Today: Smer+Republika+Sme rodina+SNS+ĽSNS = 41.8% (44.7% with the arguably Orbánist Szövetség)

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

jeez, really no one appealing to some sort of progressive left? I get it's central europe, but I'd have thought there'd at least be some third-rate party polling at like 2-3% that I wouldn't feel bleh about voting for in one way or another.

[PSOL]

jeez, really no one appealing to some sort of progressive left? I get it's central europe, but I'd have thought there'd at least be some third-rate party polling at like 2-3% that I wouldn't feel bleh about voting for in one way or another.

PS are very much the party of Elizabeth Warren, only more successful, and the Socialisti.k are jumping on entryism.

[Estrella]

jeez, really no one appealing to some sort of progressive left? I get it's central europe, but I'd have thought there'd at least be some third-rate party polling at like 2-3% that I wouldn't feel bleh about voting for in one way or another.

There are a few minor left-wing parties but they're either even more reactionary than Smer (KSS, also ZRS back in the day), not socially conservative but still obsessessive USSR simps (Socialisti.sk, described on the previous page, also the now-dissolved Vzdor) or outright scams (signature forgers of 99%). Your best bet if you want someone socially progressive and economically at least centrist-ish is PS.

SDĽ, the legal successor of the ruling Communist Party, was an ungodly Frankenstein of unreformed career apparatchiks, nostalgic pensioners and a very Blairite leadership: SDĽ finance minister Brigita Schmögnerová carried out a pretty radical programme of liberalization, tax cuts and privatizations. She then went on to found the Social Democratic Alternative and something called Progressive Forum, but neither caught on. If you ask me Schmögnerová is the best PM we never had, but alas. I suppose if Fico hadn't decided to identify Smer as left-wing, she could have gotten her way and Slovak left could be more like Polish Lewica. What we got instead was a self-fulfilling prophecy: because no progressive left-wing party emerged, young people associate the left with Fico, social conservatism, nationalism, the 1968 invasion and Stalinist nostalgia.

[Estrella]

• There have been some pretty dramatic developments in the "I won't enter a coalition with those people" department: Hlas now officially refuses to get together with PS, while SNS refuses to govern with Republika. That pretty much confirms that the next government should be Smer+Hlas+SNS, perhaps with Sme rodina added if the three don't add up to 76. Of course, there's nothing Slovak politicians love more than getting into a coalition with someone they absolutely pinky promised not to.

• There are rumors that Pellegrini will want to be PM even if Hlas finishes second behind Smer (or third behind PS, or fourth behind Republika). It's a ridiculous suggestion on the face of it, but it does make some sense: Fico is far behind Pelle in popularity ratings, and it would probably help the coalition's long-term prospects to be led by a popular conciliatory figure (everyone's second choice, in a way) rather than a man who has been the PM for a decade and is the living representation of the Slovak phrase roughly translated as "he makes the knife in my pocket open". Of course, whether Fico agrees to it is another question.

• Turns out that the leader of Republika and heroic fighter against EU/NATO imperialism Milan Uhrík used to be a member of the pro-European and pro-Western SDKÚ. A few days later, it emerged that Republika's no. 2 Miroslav Suja was a candidate for the Green Party, represented them in a regional assembly and was even a member of the party leadership council. Both cases were unearthed by ex-OĽANO (now a Democrat) ex-minister Jaroslav Naď. He was probably the best minister of defense we've had, but he's also a huge attention whore with a penchant for petty personal vendettas, so this is very much in character for him.

• The new director of the Slovak Information Service, in office for all of six days, is quite possibly implicated in the same scandal that led to the arrest and indictment of his predecessor and his predecessor's predecessor. The ride never ends.

[DavidB.]

What's the reason for Hlas' exclusion of PS, and what's the reason for SNS' exclusion of Republika?

[Estrella]

What's the reason for Hlas' exclusion of PS, and what's the reason for SNS' exclusion of Republika?

Pellegrini announced it in a rambling Facebook video that symbolizes everything that's wrong with his campaign: he never actually says why, he just keeps talking in circles about how he challenges anyone to prove he said he's going to govern with PS or SaS and says he's not going to govern with any party that is responsible for the current state of the country (PS was founded in 2017 and didn't even get into parliament, let alone the government). He also manages to cram in a cringy "hello fellow rurals" remark about how he has a string trimmer, though to be fair we are talking about a man who grew up in a city but likes to say "for my generation it isn't strange to have a tractor parked outside the house".

As for the SNS, Andrej Danko specifically cited Republika's proposed referendum on leaving NATO as a red line. Basically, SNS is trying to sell itself as a respectable alternative to Republika, the same way Republika successfully sold itself as a respectable-ish alternative to ĽSNS. The relations between the two parties have been pretty bad recently anyway after two minor far-right parties (Život and National Coalition) that ran on ĽSNS lists in 2020 joined up with SNS instead of Republika. It also seems that SNS' recent rise above the threshold is mostly happening at Republika's expense.

[Estrella]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

*deep breath* Remember this guy?

Mikuláš Vareha is quite a character. A businessman dealing in cattle, sheep, wood, furniture, agricultural machinery, vineyards, orchards, petrol stations, exotic animals – anything he could get his hands on, really. And because it was the 90s, he was more than merely dabbling in organized crime. Thanks to his huge possessions, omnipresence in his region and (admittedly dubious) charitable projects, he earned the nickname Kráľ Zemplína, or the King of Zemplín.

Another of Vareha's nicknames was Barón von DPH, the Baron von VAT. It's said he went to meetings with suitcases full of cash, each representing a company he owned, shifting money between them as necessary. Vareha was the owner of 77 companies, 11 of which engaged in fictitious dealings and circular transactions to launder dirty money and ask for refunds from the government on VAT they never paid. As the imaginary financial merry-go-round spun on, the deals kept getting bigger, complex and more imaginative: most famously, Vareha "sold" 55 million apple tree scions and 414 million bark beetles for a price literally higher than gold.

By 2011, the party was over: Vareha was sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding the state of €58 million. He lost his empire, including the holding company Agent 007, the boxing club Agent 007 and the petrol station Agent 007. So why am I talking about this man? Because of this:



Mikuláš Vareha announced the founding of a political party, called Hnutie – Stabilita (Movement – Stability).

I told you he wasn't running after all. Well, about that.

This is an actual quote from 2:15: "The next point is having a service cow. That means that every citizen of this republic who is interested in raising a cow, which will be a service cow, service because it won't be his, he'll get as a kind of a gift, right, either owned by a company or a municipality or the state, only all the work is his, he does it voluntarily and the milk he gets is his, other things are ours."

And from 5:25: "the mayor will be able to say that in our village ten people will want to farm, the next village over, when it's a bigger village, fifty people will want to farm, right, and we'll then add up these centralized numbers and we'll allocate those service cows. Those cows will be obtained either by a company or by municipalities, or they'll be allocated to the municipality and the mayor will take care of it, or it'll be through the ministry of agriculture, it'll belong to the ministry, and the cow will be allocated. That means the cow won't lose its property [sic], it'll be a state cow, so that it can't be devalued, can't be killed and so on. The person who will be renting that cow is responsible for that cow. [...] I tried it like this, in 2008 and 2009 we made a prototype, right, service cow no. 1 and service cow no. 2."

And from 9:50: "That means, the first thing I'd do, I'd change all the laws that are illegal, let's say, against our citizens. In response to my legal business, right, at least twelve laws were changed to the detriment of the citizens and to the benefit of the state. That means my business was very good, on very high level, it just wasn't good for the state."

Also, for some reason Vareha keeps pronouncing his own name as Varecha ("Spoon").

Also also, he's not lying when he's talking about the Prototype Service Cow No. 1^TM. He started handing them out in 2010:

[Mike88]

I think this is the first time a poll puts PS tied with Smer:

Median poll, vote share %: (compared with the previous poll)

17.8% PS (+0.2)
17.8% Smer (-2.4)
10.2% REP (+0.2)
  9.4% Hlas (-0.6)
  8.2% SR (+2.4)
  7.3% KDH (+0.6)
  7.1% OĽaNO–KÚ–ZĽ (+0.9)
  6.7% SASKA (-0.6)
  5.3% SNS (nc)
  3.6% Democrats (-0.5)
  2.3% L'SNS (-0.1)
  4.4% Others (nc)

Poll conducted between 25 and 31 August 2023. Polled 1,002 voters.

[Estrella]

snippity snip

On the one hand a party can randomly drop two points only to get back up the next week, even in countries with better polling*, on the other I can absolutely imagine that some people are starting to have doubts about whether they want that man back in power. It's nice to see PS ahead (their first polling lead ever!), but the more important thing is that this is the first poll with Republika clearly surpassing Hlas. The seat numbers would look like this:

30 PS
30 Smer
17 REP
16 Hlas
13 SR
12 KDH
12 OĽaNO–KÚ–ZĽ
11 SASKA
9 SNS

Not only does the all-but-official Smer+Hlas+SNS combination not get a majority, they're 21 (!) seats short. They'd need Sme rodina and a fifth partner: either Republika or, as a real longshot, KDH. Despite their statements to the contrary, SNS would be able to stomach the former, but it would be a problem for Hlas: I don't think someone who just proposed a constitutional amendment to guarantee equal rights of men and women will be comfortable governing with ex-Nazis. As for the latter, even though KDH is very socially conservative (like Smer, probably more so) and economically leftish (like Smer, probably more so, at least right now), they never got on well with Fico even though he's been trying to get KDH to join him for as long as he's been in politics.

* although I'd hazard a guess that Slovak polling is not as awful as it used to be, if nothing else because there are now 2-3 polls each week and the figures aren't jumping around as much as a few years ago

[RGM2609]

I am curious why the SNS is so much more acceptable than Republika? Isn't it fanatically pro-Russian, conspiracist and also filled with ex-Nazis?

[Estrella]

I am curious why the SNS is so much more acceptable than Republika? Isn't it fanatically pro-Russian, conspiracist and also filled with ex-Nazis?

It is – and you can add Smer too because frankly there's no ideological difference between these three parties anymore. Treating them differently is mostly a matter of perception. They are long-established parties, Fico has always been a polarizing populist and Danko is much less, er, insane than his predecessor Ján "Hungarians are ugly Mongoloids with crooked legs" Slota.

[Estrella]

Marián Kuffa is a Catholic priest, best known for creating a number of homeless shelters and for saying "homosexuals are mass murderers and genocide of the nation". Last week he added to his wide repertoire of such statements by claiming that "gender ideology actively kills the body, psyche and soul" and thanking Fico for being a PM who "stood firm and declared that gender ideology shall not pass." Which is bad enough, but he said all of this in his acceptance speech after getting the Jozef Miloslav Hurban Award on the occasion of Consitution Day.

Kuffa's brothers were members of KDH who left after the party refused to make a total abortion ban a condition of their participation in government. They formed KDŽP (now called Život), a Christian nationalist party that ran for parliament in 2020 on the ĽSNS list, caused much controversy when they occasionally helped the Heger cabinet survive some contentious parliamentary votes in its dying days, and now runs its candidates on the SNS list.

Just to reassure everyone he isn't any less insane, KDH leader Milan Majerský said in a TV debate yesterday that "both are the misfortune of every country, both corruption and LGBTI [...] they are simply plagues that destroy the country." Today he came up with something he claimed was an apology, where he clarified that he "didn't mean LGBTI people but LGBTI ideology" and he thought they were talking about registered partnerships (because that's apparently as dangerous as corruption?). PS, SaS and Democrats (but not Hlas) condemned the statements, as did the owner of the gay bar that was the site of last year's terrorist attack.

This is probably a good time to bring up that
– in more liberal circles, KDH and adjacent fundamentalists are often nicknamed Katoliban. It's a pun, but you can probably figure out what it means.
– in 2016, KDH failed to enter parliament by 0.06% after consistently polling above the threshold
– in 2020, KDH failed to enter parliament by 0.35% after consistently polling above the threshold

[Shaula🏳️‍⚧️]

I love all these Slovakian parties how did I not know about them earlier?

[Estrella]

The following post is sponsored by the phrase "political culture".

Let's have a campaign update. Smer's Robert Fico met with his ideological twin, the reactionary pro-Russian social democrat Milorad Dodik, president of Republika Srpska. The leader of PS Michal Šimečka, on the other hand, somehow managed to get a meeting with Emmanuel Macron. Republika is trying to look less extreme by very mildly criticizing the regime of Jozef Tiso and saying they "don't consider leaving the EU a realistic possibility", preferring to reform it from within. Igor Matovič presented the program of OĽANO, in which he promised various welfare measures for families with children, €500 for everyone who votes in the election (really) and declared his opposition to "perverted proposals of PS" (really), such as contraception for minors over 16 or abolishing compulsory counseling for women who seek an abortion.

Ayatollah Majerský of KDH took part in a fever dream of an interview with openly gay journalist Richard Dírer. In response to Dírer asking why he can't have the same rights with his partner as straight couples do, Majerský said it would be "a denial of basic truths about humans". He then doubled down on the whole "LGBT is a plague" thing and went on a rant about "progressive ideology, gender equality and gender ideology being pushed in schools and hospitals". Dírer then *checks notes* asked Majerský "should I be transported to a death camp?" and gave him a gift – a shirt that says PLAGUE in big rainbow letters.

https://twitter.com/tvTA3/status/1700804273657831449

Majerský's recent transformation into a shaven Ramzan Kadyrov is controversial even within KDH itself. Several candidates for the party condemned Majerský's statements, and one KDH MEP even described them as "horrifying". But another KDH candidate defended Majerský and compared being gay to being an alcoholic, so there's that.

As I said so many times in this thread (and will keep saying because it's hilarious), Boris Kollár, the speaker of Slovak parliament and leader of Sme rodina/We Are Family is the father of thirteen children with eleven different women. This has, of course, led to some drama, like that time a few years ago when he had a car accident along with his girlfriend and  different girlfriends kept visiting him at the hospital and threatening the nurses. This June, a much more serious lover-related scandal that included accusations of domestic abuse and blackmail broke out. But the news moved on and it seemed like the whole thing would fizzle out – until two weeks ago.

At the end of August, all MPs and the offices of major national newspapers received an anonymous letter with a flash drive. The drive contained a video where a woman claims that Kollár twice forced her to have an abortion, abused her and drove her to a suicide attempt. The woman then came out publicly and published the full video on Youtube, titled The Truth about Boris K, that included testimonies from her father and bank statements that allegedly prove Kollár paid for the abortions. Her name is Ema Ferusová and her father is – as if this wasn't complicated enough – Ľuboš Ferus, a convicted mafia boss.

Boris Kollár then came with an absolutely batsh/t retaliation: he revealed he had been secretly recording his conversations with Ferusová and published the recordings online. He says they prove that Ferusová is lying and that the influential lawyer and oligarch Zoroslav Kollár (no relation) paid her €40,000 to create kompromat on him.

But none of the above will take the prize for the being most absurd event of the campaign. That event happened just today.

Igor Matovič (former Prime Minister, just so we're clear) drove up to a Smer press conference in a campaign car with a megaphone and started yelling about corruption, mafia, Fico letting in illegal immigrants and so on. Robert Kaliňák (former Minister of Interior, now deputy leader of Smer) knocked on the car window, opened the door, reached inside and tried to take away Matovič's microphone. Matovič told him to, roughly translated, "get f/cked", Kaliňák provoked him with "are you scared?" and the two started fighting. Matovič kicked Kaliňák in the chest and Kaliňák told Matovič, again roughly translated, "I'm gonna f/ck you up". They were joined by Smer candidate Richard Glück, who punched Matovič in the face. Police then broke up the fight, but Matovič continued with his rant: "Give me back my microphone, it's my property, it's theft, it's a crime! [...] You killed Ján [Kuciak] and Martina! [...] Go to hell, you chickensh/t mafioso, you are cancer! Do you think people will believe you forever, do you think your voters eat hay?"

Behold:

[AustralianSwingVoter]

But none of the above will take the prize for the being most absurd event of the campaign. That event happened just today.

The most absurd event of the campaign so far lmao.

[Estrella]

Good news: I somehow forgot the whole episode from back when Pellegrini was PM about how MPs wanted to replace the 14-day polling ban with a 50-day (!) one, but it got overturned and Matovič then cut it to just 48 hours. So there's basically no polling ban at all, but if there were, it would have started tomorrow. With that in mind, let's take a look at the average of polls:



It's honestly bizarre how stable these numbers are. No party gained on lost more than 1.1% compared to three weeks ago, or more than 1.2% compared to six weeks ago. Even compared to the beginning of the year, the biggest changes are a 5 point rise for Smer and a corresponding fall for Hlas – nobody else moved more than 2 or 3 points. I guess entertainment is the only thing this campaign is good for. Of course, Slovak polls aren't that good, which is why it's important that there are no less than seven (!) parties within two points of the threshold.

As for the "others", there are four minor parties that get like half a percent in some polls: MF-ODS-ZR-SRK-DS (an absurd coalition of five disparate parties, in reality they call themselves just "7" after their list number), SHO (Slovak Movement of Renewal/Rebirth, right-wing pro-Russian reactionary nationalists), KSS (Communist Party of Slovakia, left-wing pro-Russian reactionary nationalists) and Spravodlivosť (Justice, describe themselves as "the first political party in Slovakia that uses artificial intelligence to accomplish progress and innovations").

The parliament and possible coalitions would look like this:


Smer 39 Republika 14 SNS 11 Hlas 22 Sme rodina 11 KDH 11 SaS 11 PS 31

Smer+Hlas+SNS+Sme rodina = 83 (by far the most likely coalition)
PS+Hlas+SaS+KDH+Sme rodina = 86 (the only way to a PS government)
...and that's it as far as realistic options go.

[Logical]

Odds of a repeat election? Or will Slovak politicians do their usual thing and form Frankenstein coalitions?

[Conservatopia]

Odds of a repeat election? Or will Slovak politicians do their usual thing and form Frankenstein coalitions?

Smer+Hlas+SNS+SR isn't a Frankenstein coalition, it's fairly ideologically compatible. Of course with the egos involved it still might not last into 2024.

[Storr]

snippity snip

On the one hand a party can randomly drop two points only to get back up the next week, even in countries with better polling*, on the other I can absolutely imagine that some people are starting to have doubts about whether they want that man back in power. It's nice to see PS ahead (their first polling lead ever!), but the more important thing is that this is the first poll with Republika clearly surpassing Hlas. The seat numbers would look like this:

30 PS
30 Smer
17 REP
16 Hlas
13 SR
12 KDH
12 OĽaNO–KÚ–ZĽ
11 SASKA
9 SNS

Not only does the all-but-official Smer+Hlas+SNS combination not get a majority, they're 21 (!) seats short. They'd need Sme rodina and a fifth partner: either Republika or, as a real longshot, KDH. Despite their statements to the contrary, SNS would be able to stomach the former, but it would be a problem for Hlas: I don't think someone who just proposed a constitutional amendment to guarantee equal rights of men and women will be comfortable governing with ex-Nazis. As for the latter, even though KDH is very socially conservative (like Smer, probably more so) and economically leftish (like Smer, probably more so, at least right now), they never got on well with Fico even though he's been trying to get KDH to join him for as long as he's been in politics.

* although I'd hazard a guess that Slovak polling is not as awful as it used to be, if nothing else because there are now 2-3 polls each week and the figures aren't jumping around as much as a few years ago

Have another Sickos Committee chaos poll:

AKO    5–11 Sep 2023, with change in percentage and seats from their last poll
Smer 19.4% (+0.2%)             32 (nc)
PS: 18.2% (+0.4%)               31 (+1)
Hlas 15.1% (+0.1%)              25 (nc)
SASKA 7.4 (+0.8%)               12 (+1)
OĽaNO–KÚ–ZĽ 7.0 (-0.2%)     12 (nc)
KDH 6.0% (-0.2%)                10 (nc)
SNS 6.0% (+0.1%)                  10 (nc)
SR 5.3%(-0.4%)                      9 (nc)
REP 5.2% (-1.1%)                    9 (-2)


Smer + Hlas + SR + SNS = 76 (A one seat majority always signals a stable government.)
PS + Hlas + SASKA + OLaNO = 79 (Estrella is more knowledgeable than myself, but I suppose this is the most probable scenario for a PS led government based on this poll.)

[GM Team Member and Deputy PPT WB]

and gave him a gift – a shirt that says PLAGUE in big rainbow letters.

https://twitter.com/tvTA3/status/1700804273657831449

“Homophobes don’t make a shirt that goes hard that LGBT Gen Zers would totally wear” challenge (impossible)

[Estrella]

Smer + Hlas + SR + SNS = 76 (A one seat majority always signals a stable government.)
PS + Hlas + SASKA + OLaNO = 79 (Estrella is more knowledgeable than myself, but I suppose this is the most probable scenario for a PS led government based on this poll.)

Any government including OĽANO is automatically the Maximum Chaos option. Let's remember that the only reason we're having this election is that Matovič was forced to resign after behaving like a f/cking psycho, alienated his coalition partners so much that they quit anyway, their second PM lost a confidence vote, couldn't even run a caretaker government and got fired by the President, and in the meantime a third of the caucus and every minister left the party.

That doesn't mean such a government won't happen, just that it would be a complete fiasco.

Oh, and thanks for linking to that poll because I found out it (unusually) has fairly detailed crosstabs:

Primary school or vocational high school | High school with maturita (think GCSE) | University


Slovaks | Hungarians


Men | Women


Age