Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[Estrella]

!!!

Scratch the previous post. Matovič has just announced he's "willing to resign". The OĽaNO Minister of Finance, Eduard Heger, is going to meet with SaS and Za ľudí caucuses and ask them to give him support to be the new Prime Minister.

[Estrella]

That madlad actually did it! Sometime later this week we'll get a new government, an OĽaNO-SR-SaS-ZĽ coalition (same as before) led by Prime Minister Eduard Heger.

There's a cloud to every silver lining, though: Matovič is going to be the new Minister of Finance (ugh).

[Estrella]

Habemus administrationem! The whole thing ended up being basically a small reshuffle; only four positions changed ministers.

Prime Minister: Eduard Heger (OĽaNO) — swapped places with Matovič
Finance:  Igor Matovič (OĽaNO) — swapped places with Heger
Interior:  Roman Mikulec (OĽaNO)
Foreign Affairs:  Ivan Korčok (SaS)
Economy:  Richard Sulík (SaS)
Health:  Vladimír Lengvarský (OĽaNO) — brigadier general, director of Central Military Hospital
Education:  Branislav Gröhling (SaS)
Labour:  Jozef Hlinka (Sme rodina) — no-name backbencher
Justice:  Mária Kolíková (Za ľudí)
Transport:  Andrej Doležal (Sme rodina)
Defence:  Jaroslav Naď (OĽaNO)
Agriculture:  Ján Mičovský (OĽaNO)
Culture:  Natália Milanová (OĽaNO)
Environment: Ján Budaj (OĽaNO)
Regional Development:  Veronika Remišová (Za ľudí)

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

I saw on Zuzi's Instagram that Matovic resign. So, it's all the same?

[Estrella]

I saw on Zuzi's Instagram that Matovic resign. So, it's all the same?

I mean, basically yes.

[Estrella]

Looks like Jozef Hlinka isn't going to be the Minister of Labour after all. Čaputová refused to name him after it surfaced that he worked as an advisor to Gustáv Krajčí, Mečiar's Minister of Interior and the person responsible for this:

In May 1997, a referendum was scheduled to take place, with four questions. The first three - on entry to NATO, on allowing nuclear weapons and on allowing foreign military bases on Slovak territory - were only hypothetical, as after then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright labelled Slovakia as the black hole of Europe the chance of any integration into NATO or EU was zero. The fourth question, however, dealt with changing the indirect election of President by the National Council to a direct popular vote. Kováč's term was soon to end, and the opposition feared that the parliament would not be able to agree on a successor, which would grant the presidency to Prime Minister Mečiar, giving him near-unlimited power and opening the door on a self-coup. The Minister of Interior took matters in his own hands and ordered that the ballot papers have only the first three questions. However, printing was already in progress, and many four-question ballots were already distributed. The referendum itself was a complete farce - some polling station workers accepted only ballot papers with three questions, some only those with four, some refused to let people vote at all and thanks to opposition's call for a boycott, turnout was only 9.5%. Mečiar had achieved what he wanted. Just hours after Kováč's term expired and he became the interim president, he announced the so-called Mečiar's amnesties that immediately halted all investigations into the Kováč Jr./Remiáš case and the sabotaged referendum.

[Estrella]

Remember how this crisis started when Matovič bought Sputnik vaccines without bothering to tell his cabinet? This is what went down since then (aside from the whole coalition collapse thing etc):

- State Institute for Control of Medication (ŠÚKL) released their assessment of Sputnik  
- Matovič took an issue with its criticism of the vaccine. Even worse, he took it personally.
- He then wrote an excoriating Facebook status (as always) and told ŠÚKL "congratulations, idiots!" (direct quote)
- Russia didn't like it either, and they (allegedly?) wanted the vaccines back
- Yesterday, without telling anyone, Matovič flew to Moscow and met with the CEO of Russian Direct Investment Fund
- Just go give you a glimpse of Matovič's communication style

Greetings from Moscow. In Slovakia some "horribly dangerous" pinscher started hatefully barking at Sputnik. I'm going to do what is my duty and let him enjoy a moment of superhuman importance. #ForAHealthySlovakia

- A very important question is going unanswered: we've already paid for the vaccines, but where did the money come from?

As that wise granny from Slunce seno a pár facek once said: "They're already fighting, they're already fighting, I've been saying it from the start, they're gonna break their dicks!"

[Estrella]

We have the first poll since Heger became PM and, well, ...

Hlas 22%
SaS 11%
Smer 11%
OĽANO 9%
Sme rodina 7%
PS 6%
KDH 6%
Aliancia/Szövetség 5%
Za ľudí 5%
Republika 5%
ĽSNS 4%
SNS 3%

So, of four governing parties, one is barely above ten percent and the other three (including the PM's party!) are polling single digits. Amazing, isn't it?

[PSOL]

In case we see a full government collapse, is a Hlas-Smer-PS coalition is even viable to take power?

[Estrella]

In case we see a full government collapse, is a Hlas-Smer-PS coalition is even viable to take power?

No.

While Hlas-Smer-PS may seem like an ordinary social democrat-progressive liberal coalition on the face of it, Slovak left is different from the left in Western Europe or even places like Poland or Hungary. While Hlas and Smer are genuinely left-leaning on economic issues and not nearly as morally bankrupt as, say, the Romanian PSD, they are rather socially conservative* and nationalist†, not to mention up to eyeballs in corruption scandals‡. Hlas and PS could maybeee work together if there was no other option and Smer wasn't involved, but the path of least resistance for Pellegrini to form a coalition is Hlas+Smer+some populists. Ideologically, Sme rodina is basically Smer if it was led by a Berlusconi wannabe, and it seems like a good fit, as does Republika - though with the latter there might be a problem with the Nazi past of some of its members. KDH has historically supported centre-right anti-Smer governments, but they might be willing to govern with Pelle for a price. It doesn't look likely that SNS returns to parliament, but they'd be a good partner as well.

* though not in an overtly Bible-thumping way; Smer and Hlas are more like "everyone's human rights should be respected, but something something traditional Slovak values" rather than "reeeeee gays are sinners!". The latter types are mostly found in OĽANO, KDH, SNS and ĽSNS.
† but not Euroskeptic; even during the height of Smer's campaign against migrant quotas, it was framed as "vote for us and we'll fight it in European institutions" rather than "reeeee EU bad!". The latter types are pretty much nonexistent outside ĽSNS, fringe far-right microparties and, curiously enough, SaS during Radičová's government.
‡ anti-corruption activism is a big part of PS agenda, and they are sufficiently principled to refuse to compromise on that

[Estrella]

The mafioso Maroš Deák is officially confirmed to be dead. In 2012, a derelict yacht carrying €92 million worth of cocaine was found off the coast of Tonga, along with the body of an accomplice; Deák was known to be the a member of the crew, but his body was nowhere to be found.

What's this to do with politics? In late 1997, the Deák brothers blackmailed a businessman some guy who got rich off privatisation fraud into "giving" them much of his property, including a Harley-Davidson motorbike. Said Harley then ended up in the garage of a certain Boris Kollár, who happens to be the current leader of Sme rodina and Speaker of National Council. Kollár testified in the case, where he claimed that he didn't know where the bike came from, but his testimony was thrown out after evidence to the contrary emerged. The matter wasn't pursued further, but the whole thing is... very interesting to say the least.

[Estrella]

At the end of last year, Pellegrini and Fico decided to join forces and start a campaign to collect signatures to call a referendum on shortening the term of parliament - basically a very roundabout way of forcing an early election. It wasn't clear if they'll reach the threshold of 350,000 signatures - yes, the government is extremely unpopular, but pandemic makes it difficult to organize this kind of campaign, not to mention that Fico isn't exactly loved either.

In the end, they exceeded anyone's expectations: they collected 585,000 signatures, equivalent to 13% of registered voters. Now the President has thirty days to either approve the petition and call a referendum, or refer the matter to Constitutional Court.

In other news, Matovič seems to think he still isn't hated enough - he came up with a plan to increase the VAT from 20% to 25% (and announced it on Facebook, of course).

[Estrella]

Tack's post about village feuds in the Spanish thread inspired me to do something similar. I took a look at the results of the 2020 election by municipality and I've found some pretty interesting stuff. The links are Streetviews of those places.

Valentovce - a tiny shıthole village in the poor Northeast
Smer 59% [19 votes] — 18% nationally
ĽSNS 13% [4 votes]
SNS 6% [2 votes]
7 parties with 1 vote each

Krušetnica - a village in the ultra-Catholic Orava region
KDH 51% [302 votes] — 5% nationally
OĽANO 18% [104 votes]
Smer 7% [46 votes]
ĽSNS 7% [42 votes]

Letničie - northern Záhorie is also strongly Catholic, though for some reason this translates to voting for OĽANO
OĽANO 42% [124 votes] — 25% nationally
Smer 18% [52 votes]
ĽSNS 9% [26 votes]
Sme rodina 9% [26 votes]
PS-Spolu 5% [14 votes]

Sap - one of many Hungarian villages on Rye Island
MKÖ-MKS 56% [150 votes] — 4% nationally
Most-Híd 24% [64 votes] — 2% nationally
OĽANO 7% [19 votes]

Muránska Zdychava - an isolated village high up in the Stolica Mountains. I've actually visited this place and locals advised us that if we want to drive there, we should check the bus timetable because there road is so narrow that if the bus happens to be going in the opposite direction and we meet, it's... a problem.
ĽSNS 33% [35 votes] — 8% nationally
Smer 25% [27 votes]
OĽANO 8% [9 votes]
SNS 7% [8 votes]
Vlasť 6% [6 votes]

Ruská Bystrá - I really want to know what's happening here
SNS 20% [12 votes] — 3% nationally
Smer 19% [11 votes]
Sme rodina 19% [11 votes]
OĽANO 14% [8 votes]
SĽS Andreja Hlinku 5% [3 votes] — no idea who they are, but this is who they took the name from, which... yikes.
ĽSNS 5% [3 votes]

[Estrella]

Smer has a new logo and they apparently just ripped it off some random Pinterest post ahahaha



This isn't the first time something like this happened btw - last year they were sued by the creators of this Likud ad...

...for stealing the concept and using it in an ad of their own.

[Mike88]

Yikes! I mean, they didn't even bother to cheat things a little. Remarkable! (or not xD). But, seriously, the marketing team of Smer needs to be fired.

[Estrella]

Ján Mičovský, the OĽaNO Minister of Agriculture, has resigned after his nominee for the position of director of Slovak Land Fund was indicted for corruption and creation of a criminal group. The Fund is a quango that manages publicly owned farmland and pastures, and since there's quite a lot of it as a legacy of Commie collective farms, there's also a huge potential for corruption. tl;dr good.

Meanwhile Ján Herák, an OĽaNO MP and summer camp organizer, was indicted for as yet unspecified "abuse of children" :/

[Estrella]

Days after the Police Inspectorate raided the home of the former director of National Criminal Agency (NAKA) Branislav Zurian, NAKA raided the home of current Police Inspectorate director Adrián Szabó and arrested him for taking a bribe in the form of a TV set and €20k in cash, in return for shelving investigations into multiple cases of police misconduct.

A power struggle between two security organizations or a genuine attempt to root out corruption? ¿Por qué no los dos?

_{If any of you read my posts in Parliament of Recommendations and were wondering why some much of politics in my fantasyland revolves around increasingly ridiculous corruption scandals... yeah.}

[Former President tack50]

So uh, who does the Slovak PM side with in this anti-corruption civil war?

Plus hey, maybe all the corrupt people will arrest each other and throw each other in jail so try to look at the bright side /s

[Estrella]

So uh, who does the Slovak PM side with in this anti-corruption civil war?

Plus hey, maybe all the corrupt people will arrest each other and throw each other in jail so try to look at the bright side /s

The starting point is this:

Over the past year or so, there were many, many prosecutions of crooked justice people, among others several high-ranking judges (corruption), a high-ranking prosecutor (corruption) and another batch of like a dozen judges (the C word again). So that's clearly a good thing but I thought our justice system is reaching its limits of self-cleaning and it can't possibly do much more. Well...

During a mega-raid yesterday, the following people were arrested and indicted for corruption, abuse of official competences and creation of a criminal group:
- František Böhm, a former member of Slovak Information Service (the national intelligence agency)
- Dušan Kováčik, a long-time boss of Office of the Special Prosecutor
- Ľudovít Makó, former boss of Criminal Office of Financial Administration
- Bernard Slobodník, a former chief of National Unit of Financial Police
- Róbert Krajmer, former director of National Anticorruption Unit
- Peter Hraško, the former chief of National Criminal Agency
- Tibor Gašpar, the former Police President

This seems to be a conflict between police trying to scuttle investigations into their own higher-ups and SIS, and the government seems to be taking the latter's side. In any case, the best description of the current state of affairs is Jesus Christ, this shouldn't be happening in an EU country.

In one of the buildings of SIS, in a special room secured against surveillance, a meeting took place, with new director of SIS Michal Aláč, President Zuzana Čaputová, Prime Minister Eduard Heger, Speaker of Parliament, Minister of Justice, Minister of Interior, Prosecutor General, Special Prosecutor, Police President and director of Inspection Office of Ministry of Interior. The meeting was initiated by the PM, who confirmed this to Denník N [a newspaper]. Heger called the meeting after he received information from SIS about manipulation of investigations.

[original article]

What "manipulation of investigations" seems to refer to is police allegedly influencing wittness testimonies to avoid implicating the wrong people. The meeting came after Sme rodina alleged that the arrest of former SIS director Vladimír Pčolinský was motivated by his investigation into police corruption.

[Estrella]

In the polls, Heger hasn't been able to revive the fortunes, neither for the government as a whole, nor for OĽANO who are now about two margins of error away from the threshold Numbers are compared to election results.

Hlas 22% [new]
SaS 12% [▲6]
Smer 12% [▼6]
OĽANO 9% [▼16]
Sme rodina 7% [▼1]
PS 6% [▼1]
KDH 6% [▲1]
ĽSNS 5% [▼3]
Szövetség 5% [▼1]
Republika 5% [new]
Za ľudí 4% [▼2]
SNS 3% [━ 0]
————————————
Total coalition 32% [▼13]

[Estrella]

Ján Mičovský, the OĽaNO Minister of Agriculture, has resigned after his nominee for the position of director of Slovak Land Fund was indicted for corruption and creation of a criminal group. The Fund is a quango that manages publicly owned farmland and pastures, and since there's quite a lot of it as a legacy of Commie collective farms, there's also a huge potential for corruption. tl;dr good.

*facepalm*

He has now unresigned but President announced she's dismissing him anyway.

[Mike88]

https://twitter.com/EuropeElects/status/1401997536391581700

So, for some reason Smer is making a comeback after the whole "logo fiasco"? Or is this polling company more favourable to them?

[Estrella]

So, for some reason Smer is making a comeback after the whole "logo fiasco"? Or is this polling company more favourable to them?

Haha, I don't think anybody actually cares about the logo. It's mostly just that Fico shows himself in the media a lot more than Pelle or, for that matter, any other party leader, government or opposition. I guess that the Old Man Yells At Cloud press conferences he holds almost every day appeal to some people.

[Estrella]

okay guys this is getting ridiculous

On Thursday, Inspection Office of Ministry of Interior raided the premises of National Criminal Agency. The action was related to the alleged manipulation of investigations into serious cases of corruption. The Office of Special Prosecutor has called this a grave intervention into the investigation. The Inspection Office seized files of cases currently under investigation as a part of operation Očistec (Purgatory).

The Prosecutor General has tasked the regional prosecutor in Bratislava with investigating the legality of the raid. The Minister of Interior stated that he believes the raid was lawful. Prime Minister Eduard Heger did not publicly support either side. He said that police and prosecutors have a carte blanche and this applies to all units. "For me, it's important that all units of the state stick to their competences and act within the bounds of the law" he said.

[Estrella]

Highlights of this week's edition of Estrella's The Madhouse Gazette, the best source of news about Slovak politics:

1. The opposition called for a vote of no confidence in Roman Mikulec, the Minister of Interior. Good news for Heger: the vote failed 72-53 and Mikulec stays on. Bad news for Heger: six Sme rodina MPs abstained.

2. Za ľudí is in serious danger of breaking up. The party is split between two wings: that of Mária Kolíková (Minister of Justice) and of Veronika Remišová (Minister of Investments). It's a mix of both petty personal vendettas and actual disagreements about how to proceed with investigations into corruption. Juraj Šeliga (deputy speaker, resigned during the most recent coalition crisis) wants to call a party convention in September at the latest, where he wants to run for leader as some sort of compromise candidate.

3. The neverending trial of Smer-adjacent businessman/mafioso Marián Kočner for ordering the murder of Ján Kuciak continues. The Supreme Court threw out the (extremely controversial and dubious to say the least) not guilty verdict, declared a mistrial and ordered the proceedings to start anew.