Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[CumbrianLefty]

LOL, a country whose politics is actually more dysfunctional than the UK or US

[Estrella]

LOL, a country whose politics is actually more dysfunctional than the UK or US

As if on cue (well, sort of, it was on Thursday): Matovič actually deigned to reply to that interview, and I'm translating the whole thing because he's gone completely off his rockers.

Before you read it, I again need to remind you that these two people sit in the same cabinet.

HE'S DONE IT BEFORE

This has already happened once. 10 years ago he kept pounding at Radičová like this until he destroyed her long-desired government and paved the way for a return of 8 years of mafia government.

Now he's doing it again. Apparently with the same goal. The hate that he stirs in people against me, coalition partners, chief hygienicist, pandemic commission, crisis committee ... dramatically decreases the willingness of people to follow rules ... and we see the consequences every day in record statistics of cases and deaths.

... and finally, besides the ill and the dead, it's the children from closed schools, restaurants and shops who pay the price for his populism.

A person who, in this dramatic situation, is able to ask the cabinet "why decrease the curve if it's going to grow anyway " ... is the greatest danger to lives and health of people ... and I'm incredibly sorry for that.

[Estrella]

To give you an idea of where things are politically, here's a really shxtty photo of people's trust in politicians. Gold is trust, maroon is distrust.



Matovič is honestly impressive. He's been the PM for not even nine months and he's already almost as unpopular as an insanely corrupt career politician and a literal Nazi.

[Ⓐnarchy in the ☭☭☭P!]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1339280888782315531

[Estrella]

I fully expect OĽaNO to fall to third place in the next poll or two

I knew it, I knew it!

but still, lmao

[CumbrianLefty]

And on those trends they will be 4th or 5th soon.

[Estrella]

Pavol Rusko is (was?) one of the richest people in Slovakia. His first involvement in politics was as the director of TV Markíza, the only private TV station in Slovakia during the vaguely authoritarian Vladimír Mečiar era. Markíza's fairly balanced news coverage was a huge contrast to blatant propaganda on the public STV and made the station very popular. Two weeks before the 1998 election, Rusko's long-running dispute with shareholder Marián Kočner finally boiled over. Kočner sent people from the "Borbély Detective Agency" (a front for Bratislava's most prominent mafia family) to seize the Markíza building. Due to Kočner's close relations with Mečiar, this was seen as an attempt to silence opposition media and was met with a massive backlash. Newsreaders barricaded themselves in the studio, thousands of people surrounded the building and after a wave of protests spread through the country, supported by all of the opposition, Mečiar pressured Kočner to call it off.

Then in 2002, Rusko decided to create his own party, the rather creepily named Alliance of the New Citizen. They won 8% and entered Dzurinda's second government. Soon after, Rusko and his ministers fell out and the party fell apart.

That was just some interesting background stuff, because it's not why everybody's talking about him now. For several years now, Rusko and Kočner have been on trial for counterfeiting €63 million worth of Markíza bonds. Today, Rusko was supposed to go to court again... but, according to a doctor's report, on Monday someone threw acid on his face when he went jogging. Then it turned out that the doctor is a discredited hack and Rusko had to go to court anyway, though he still stuck to his story. Because he was deemed an escape risk, he was sent to jail.

Now this is where it gets really bizarre. Enter Ibrahim Maiga, a Malian-Slovak (is there such a thing?), uhm, entertainer. Hilariously enough, Wikipedia also describes him as a "politician", by which they mean that one time he stood for European Parliament for SDĽ (those ex-Commies that didn't merge into Smer). Anyway, this is a part of an interview he gave to a newspaper, presented without comment:

Journalist: Did you talk with Rusko about helping him escape to Mali?

Maiga: No, that's nonsense. [...] When I saw what problems he has and that he's going to court, I offered him: Paľko, you should get purified. In Africa we have different ways to do it, most common are shamans who tell the person what to do to get rid of demons following him.

J: And Rusko liked it so much that he said yes?

M: He said, why not? [...]

J: How should the purification have happened?

M: I called my mom and asked her to find out what we can do. She went to a shaman, who told her that Paľko has many enemies and he must sacrifice something to get rid of them. He needed to provide the name of his mother and the names of people he's having trouble with. He provided these names and then the shaman told him that he also needs to sacrifice a ram and a rooster. Because he was bugged and someone heard it, they thought he wants to escape to Mali.

I love this country.

[Estrella]

And that is still not the most fxcking insane thing that happened today, somehow. I've had enough of writing my opinions about this shxt, I think I've said everything that needs to be said, so here's again a quote from a news article:

Matovič asked for Sulík's resignation, he'd accept it before Christmas

Prime Minister and OĽaNO leader Igor Matovič announced that he'd accept the resignation of SaS leader Richard Sulík, with whom he has long had disputes about pandemic measures.

"Of course it's worthy of a resignation and I'd be very happy if he handed it in before Christmas" said Matovič.

PM said this in a debate in Rádio Express, stating that Sulík refused an amendment to the public procurement law to buy antigen tests. Matovič asked him to do it on Wednesday.

PM called Sulík an idiot because he couldn't buy tests, while his voice was shaking and spoke in a tearful tone.

Sulík has earlier explained that he didn't buy the tests yet because Ministry of Health only sent him the correct request on the fifth attempt, and only after writing a letter to the PM.

This is basically how a Donald Trump government would work in a parliamentary system tbh.

[Estrella]

Also also also,

Also, according to other testimonies, the former Minister of Economy, now Hlas MP Peter Žiga convinced Norbert Bödör to pay €50k to police officials to stop an investigation into Žiga's nephew.

Yeah, he's been officially indicted. And it's not just that, but something even bigger: he attempted to bribe a Supreme Court judge to get a favorable decision in a case involving the Gabčíkovo hydroelectric complex. He gave €100,000 to a middle(wo)man, Monika Jankovská, then a junior minister at the Ministry of Justice. Jankovská was directed to give the money to the judge, but she (the judge) refused to take it.

[Mike88]

The Rusko story is just... lol. Hilarious. The poor guy was only using a shaman to put away "bad spirits".

Do you think snap elections are inevitable in 2021?

[Estrella]

Do you think snap elections are inevitable in 2021?

They're likely for sure, but I wouldn't say inevitable. Matovič is completely unpredictable and maybe he'll calm down once the crisis is over.

The Rusko story is just... lol. Hilarious. The poor guy was only using a shaman to put away "bad spirits".

For all we know, the rooster sacrifice stuff might have really been a cover for an escape to Mali or elsewhere - wouldn't be the first time Maiga got involved in that kind of fxckery.

First, some context:

The 1994-1998 term was to become the most dramatic one in Slovakia's short history. The HZDS - with their catchy campaign song - cruised to an easy victory and Mečiar again became the PM, with ZRS added to his HZDS-SNS coalition, strongly opposed by President Kováč.

The President's son, Michal Kováč junior, was wanted by Interpol due to some shady financial dealings. Mečiar, with his lackey Ivan Lexa - the newly-appointed head of SIS, Slovakia's intelligence agency - decided to used this to blackmail his father. On August 31, 1995, Kováč Jr's Mercedes was stopped on a road near Bratislava. He was pulled out of the car by armed men, blindfolded, forced to drink a whole bottle of whisky and driven to Austria, where he was dropped off in front of the police station in Hainburg. Soon after, the police investigator was sacked and the case was unceremoniously closed - that is until Oskar Fegyveres, a SIS operative and a key witness to the kidnapping, decided to come clean. Afraid for his life, Fegyveres fled to Switzerland. He kept contact with journalists in Slovakia through his friend, Róbert Remiáš. At night on April 29, 1996, Remiáš was driving home, when his car exploded, the bomb being planted by mafia on orders from SIS. Mečiar's statement about the case - which would become a popular catchphrase - was simple: Skutok sa nestal. The act did not happen.

One of the people involved in the kidnapping was Ľuboš Kosík, an SIS agent. In 2016 he was sentenced to 14 years in jail (unrelated case; forgery) and it looked likely that amnesties on the kidnapping will be cancelled, but he was nowhere to be found. Turns out that he and Maiga knew each other thanks to a common friend, an MP for HZDS. Before he was arrested, Kosík managed to flee to Mali, where he went into hiding with Maiga's help. Both were arrested on an Interpol warrant and while Maiga was released, Kosík went to jail. For some reason he wasn't extradited and in 2018 he was released, then he was allegedly kidnapped (?) and now he's in jail again. Maiga didn't deny his involvement, he even took journalists on a little tour of Bamako and showed them where they stayed and where they were arrested, but he claims to have lost contact with him.

As it happens, Ivan Lexa also fled to Africa - after Mečiar's fall, he vanished from the face of the Earth until he was arrested in 2002 in Durban of all places.

[Estrella]

And yet another bombshell came out in the megascandal that led to arrests of something like 20 people so far (not including the 13 judges prosecuted for corruption earlier this year, a case that is likely connected to this), confirming what everyone suspected:

... a web of corruption that was in high likelihood kept alive by police officers, prosecutors and judges, with significant participation of corrupt business environment, where money was the number one priority for all concerned. [...] the court finds the discoveries monstruous.

Another spicy secret that has now become public is that before the 2016 election, Norbert Bödör was trying to get his hands on a certain video recording that had the potential to discredit Fico. He also obtained listening devices from a government agency and installed them in a café owned by Milan Krajniak (current Minister of Labour, then a Sme Rodina MP) and in his own hotel, the Zlatý kľúčik. From what we know so far, a key figure in this case is Ivan Katrinec: a self-proclaimed activist, whistleblower, conspiracy theorist about the Hejce disaster and a former Smer MP, currently in jail for extortion. Irrelevant but interesting detail: in this video he attacks a journalist and the title card at 0:38 has me dying: "Katrinec avoided paying alimonies and in the past he was convicted for threatening to shoot a person, theft of hay and slander".

Hang on, Zlatý kľúčik - that name rings a bell...

My cousin's wedding reception took place in a Bödör-owned hotel, so I probably share some of the guilt

... oh. I mean, back then (early 2019), Bödör was already in the news for all sorts of scandals and we knew whose hotel it is and we were joking about it (and privately wondering if my cousin went completely bananas), but... Jesus.

[Estrella]

Fxck knows why I'm posting here on Christmas Eve, but whatever.

Basically, Matovič wanted to have another round of nationwide testing and told Sulík (who is, remember, also the Minister of Economy) to order eight million tests. And Sulík didn't - he just flat out refused. Matovič is currently busy being in that good peaceful Christmas spirit, i.e. flying off the handle and yelling about betrayal to anyone willing to listen.

Merry Christmas to both these morons. And to y'all too.

[Estrella]

So, Milan Lučanský: who is he?

In 1989 he entered police forces; he rose up the career ladder and in 2004 he entered the Bureau of Fight against Organized Crime. In 2012 he became one of Vicepresidents of Police Corps. In this position he was considered the right hand of Robert Kaliňák, the Smer Minister of Interior. The Police President (i.e. the national police chief) at the time was Tibor Gašpar, who resigned in response to murder of Ján Kuciak and the largest wave of protests since 1989. He was succeeded by Lučanský.

On August 31 this year, Lučanský resigned, citing disagreements with the new cabinet. On November 5, Tibor Gašpar was arrested for corruption; on December 2, Lučanský was arrested as well; then, on December 29...

https://twitter.com/denniksme/status/1343984012335828992

Former Police President Lučanský attempted suicide.

He was found in his cell after he tried to hang himself. He was taken to hospital, still alive, and some were hoping that he will recover and will be able to give a testimony, but today, bad news came out:



General Lučanský is dead.

[Estrella]

I see that things are going well.



Keep calm.

I'm not angry at Igor, that won't help Slovakia.
I'm not angry at Igor, that won't help Slovakia.
I'm not angry at Igor, that won't help Slovakia.
...

[Estrella]

I, for one, like coalition partners solving their disagreements through the medium of memes and godawful poetry.

When you life isn't just Excel* (sent by Mišo)

I asked for a plan! They gave it to me
Crisis Committee agreed to it. They said I should buy tests
so that people won't die...
But I wanted to have excuses
Old? Sick? Vulnerable?
No problem! Luxury in Dubai!
Where poor people didn't have signal!
... and innocent people died.

* Sulík is nicknamed Excel due to his obsession with numbers and bringing printouts of tables and charts to every TV debate.

[Estrella]

That was the fun side of it. The less fun and more facepalm side is this: front page of a newspaper with Matovič giving a presentation about 4300 AVOIDABLE DEATHS and 1 BILLION ECONOMIC DAMAGE, all of which is, apparently, the fault of his own Minister of Economy.



Slovakia is the only country that has two leaders of opposition and both of them are in government.

[Estrella]

Pumpa is a sitcom made by RTVS, the public broadcaster. It's basically the Slovak version of Corner Gas: it takes place at a gas station in the middle of nowhere and occasionally famous people or public figures are invited as guest stars.

The most recent episode caused a minor scandal: the guest was Mária Kolíková, the Minister of Justice. Somehow the conversation turned to the Lučanský suicide. She explained the details of the case and, reacting a character's complaints ("it pisses me off that some people treat him as a hero!") she said "well, he wasn't Kuciak or Palach". This was critized by his family and other politicians as insensitive and the TV station subsequently apologized. I mean, the guy was a criminal, but they have a point.

It's still up, by the way, and getting disliked to hell.

(Another highlight of the episode was some guy telling the minister that she "talks like a telegraph" [sic] and needs to fix her hair and eyelashes and smile more -_-)

[kaoras]

So, if current polling were replicated in an election, who would govern? Hlas is first but I'm guessing Fico would rather burn in hell than let Pellegrini govern. Pellegrini would either need to reach out to the far right a la Smer or a ""grand"" coalition with Olano or SAS. Who are their potential partners?

[Estrella]

So, if current polling were replicated in an election, who would govern? Hlas is first but I'm guessing Fico would rather burn in hell than let Pellegrini govern. Pellegrini would either need to reach out to the far right a la Smer or a ""grand"" coalition with Olano or SAS. Who are their potential partners?

Who knows if polls will look anything like this when the election comes, but if anything, it's Pellegrini who wouldn't wan't to associate with Fico - his reputation is that bad. Fico has become something like latter day Berlusconi in that his political career is basically over and his main concern is staying out of jail and if being in a Pelle-led government is what it takes, so be it. At the end of the day, though, pragmatism will win and I can totally imagine them being in government together. More complicated coalition calculations are pretty much useless right now, not least because we don't know who will be on speaking terms with whom after the election and five parties (KDH, Za ľudí, Sme rodina, Kotleba, PS) are dancing around the threshold.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, if current polling were replicated in an election, who would govern? Hlas is first but I'm guessing Fico would rather burn in hell than let Pellegrini govern. Pellegrini would either need to reach out to the far right a la Smer or a ""grand"" coalition with Olano or SAS. Who are their potential partners?

Who knows if polls will look anything like this when the election comes, but if anything, it's Pellegrini who wouldn't wan't to associate with Fico - his reputation is that bad. Fico has become something like latter day Berlusconi in that his political career is basically over and his main concern is staying out of jail and if being in a Pelle-led government is what it takes, so be it. At the end of the day, though, pragmatism will win and I can totally imagine them being in government together. More complicated coalition calculations are pretty much useless right now, not least because we don't know who will be on speaking terms with whom after the election and five parties (KDH, Za ľudí, Sme rodina, Kotleba, PS) are dancing around the threshold.

Would PS govern with Pellegrini?

[Estrella]

So, if current polling were replicated in an election, who would govern? Hlas is first but I'm guessing Fico would rather burn in hell than let Pellegrini govern. Pellegrini would either need to reach out to the far right a la Smer or a ""grand"" coalition with Olano or SAS. Who are their potential partners?

Who knows if polls will look anything like this when the election comes, but if anything, it's Pellegrini who wouldn't wan't to associate with Fico - his reputation is that bad. Fico has become something like latter day Berlusconi in that his political career is basically over and his main concern is staying out of jail and if being in a Pelle-led government is what it takes, so be it. At the end of the day, though, pragmatism will win and I can totally imagine them being in government together. More complicated coalition calculations are pretty much useless right now, not least because we don't know who will be on speaking terms with whom after the election and five parties (KDH, Za ľudí, Sme rodina, Kotleba, PS) are dancing around the threshold.

Would PS govern with Pellegrini?

Pretty unlikely. PS is a party of educated urban liberals and Pelle is big on appealing to exact opposite people ("normal Slovak life is not lived in Bratislava, just like it's not lived abroad"). PS aren't all that liberal and Pelle isn't some reactionary, but there would be an ideological divide. That in itself wouldn't be a problem, bigger gaps have been bridged*, but it wouldn't end well for PS, electorally speaking.

* I'm still impressed by the absurdity of the Fico III cabinet. Coalition negotiations took all of 18 days and it consisted of:
- Smer
- SNS, a party whose ex-leader (until 2013) was fond of drunk rants about how Hungarians are "a tumor on the body of Slovak nation"
- Most-Híd, a party that whose voter base consited of some anti-Fico urbanites, but mostly ethnic Hungarians
- #Sieť, a party led by a guy who proclaimed himself the leader of anti-Fico opposition

[Estrella]

If OĽaNO were literally 0.2% lower, I'd have won a bet I made about them dropping into single digits before the first anniversary of last election.

Never mind, I still have five weeks and I'm sure at least one more poll will be released till then.

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1353326188744351744

[Estrella]

One thing I should note is that while both ĽSNS and OĽaNO have some sort of base that will most likely stick with them, in a recent post I mentioned that ĽSNS was near the 5% threshold. That was because in a poll I looked at, they were at around 5%, and they're five points higher now. Polls in Slovakia are notoriously terrible (still worth looking at them for the trends) and when the election comes, a five-point or bigger polling error is something that absolutely can and did happen. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's certainly possible that it could also happen in a downwards direction and it could happen to, say, OĽaNO.

Hm.

[Astatine]

One thing I should note is that while both ĽSNS and OĽaNO have some sort of base that will most likely stick with them, in a recent post I mentioned that ĽSNS was near the 5% threshold. That was because in a poll I looked at, they were at around 5%, and they're five points higher now. Polls in Slovakia are notoriously terrible (still worth looking at them for the trends) and when the election comes, a five-point or bigger polling error is something that absolutely can and did happen. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's certainly possible that it could also happen in a downwards direction and it could happen to, say, OĽaNO.

Hm.

Radoslav Procházka, is that you?