Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[Estrella]

Estella, please inform us about that girl's fight.

Dramatis personae:

1.

* Romana Tabák [an OĽaNO MP], known for 1) being a former tennis player 2) making an idiot of herself 3) opposing the delivery of Slovak S-300 missiles to Ukraine, to which the minister of defense replied "the only rocket Tabák understands is the tennis one"

(She was fired from OĽaNO earlier this year after her vote in parliament prevented a corruption investigation into Robert Fico – more on that incident in the quoted post)

2. Jana Bittó Cigániková, an SaS MP, something of an attack dog for the party and the target of a lot of hate from the usual red-brown suspects and Matovič. Very much the opposite of Tabák, ideologically and personally.

Tabák and Cigániková met a few days ago at a concert of rapper Majk Spirit.

Spirit is an acquaintance of Cigániková, performed at her wedding as a special guest and called her "the sexiest MP."

I'll leave it to those involved to explain what happened.

Tabák admitted that she slapped Bittó Cigániková after she knocked her baseball cap off her head. "Then she calmed down", said the MP for a tabloid, adding that she hopes Bittó Cigániková will undergo a drug test, see a therapist and resign from the chairmanship of the parliamentary healthcare committee.

"During the repeated verbal attacks I somehow managed to keep my cool and not let myself be provoked, but she continued. Since she was hiding under a baseball cap, I removed it, so that everyone could see what 'intelligence' represents her voters in parliament. I thought that when she realizes people are looking at her, she'll calm down," she said. She stated the situation escalated, even though she didn't react to the assault and hair pulling.

[Estrella]

Yesterday, Parliament was supposed to vote on a motion of no confidence in Matovič. Normally it wouldn't be anything too important - near-monthly motions of no confidence in individual ministers have become a tradition thanks to, guess who, Matovič, and they never lead to anything. Of course, things are a bit wobbly for him now that the government doesn't have a majority. The vote was delayed to today morning after some procedural fxckery, then delayed to evening after Matovič gave an unhinged two-hour speech attacking everyone (including comparing journalists critical of him to those that worked for Hitler -_-) and then delayed again to Tuesday after an MP passed out.

[Estrella]

I could write a dozen paragraphs about the collapsing healthcare system, crumbling schools, trains catching fire, the drunk driving epidemic, the joke of a justice system, emigration, ever-present nepotism and a million other problems, none of which started with this government but all of which are being neglected at best and often actively made worse as Matovič, Kollár and Sulík are having a pie fight while Rome burns.

Instead I'll show you some poetic justice.

Parliament is barely functioning, the voting system is collapsing. A new one could cost millions.

A simple procedure - inserting the voting card into the device, pressing the "present" button and then one of "for", "against" or "abstain" is currently the most stressful moment in the work of an MP. They can't be sure if the voting devices registered their vote. As the coalition is in a minority and every vote matters, a technical problem turns into an existential one for the government. Some government bills may not pass due to the malfunction.

"I'm sorry, it's weird, but you need to take out the cards, rub them, Mrs. Cigániková suggests on the butt, but trousers are okay too. Try again," continued Speaker Boris Kollár's attempt to get the voting to work on a Wednesday two weeks ago.

"Dear colleagues, if it didn't work, try again. It works? Great! So rubbing it on the butt was enough. Thank you," remarked Kollár. A problem that used to occur sporadically now repeats almost every day.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've said it before and I will say it again: I love this thread.

[DavidB.]

What are the 100 right-wing populist or hard right parties' stances on Russia/Ukraine? And are SNS definitively dead or will they bounce back?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

What are the 100 right-wing populist or hard right parties' stances on Russia/Ukraine? And are SNS definitively dead or will they bounce back?

My understanding is that the SNS' big advantage was always sitting on a massive pile of dodgy money that can be splashed on campaigns, so they might have a chance. But I expect Estrella will know much more.

[Estrella]

What are the 100 right-wing populist or hard right parties' stances on Russia/Ukraine? And are SNS definitively dead or will they bounce back?

Slovakia is, disappointingly, comparable to somewhere like Bulgaria in that the government is pro-Ukraine but there's a large section of the population sympathetic to Russia. It's not as big (about 30% of the country, if I had to guess) or as intense, but it's still an important factor. These people are unsurprisingly older, poorer, less educated, rural and have low trust in institutions. They overwhelmingly vote for parties of what I'd call Slovakia's nationalist-populist tradition: Smer, Hlas, ĽSNS, Sme rodina, SNS; or HZDS, ZRS and KSS in the past.

Slovak nationalism has always been pro-Russian. After WW1, many nationalists were sympathetic to Salazar-style clerical quasi-fascism, anti-Czechoslovakia (at the time a liberal democracy aligned with Western Europe) and openly pro-Nazi during WW2. I'm guessing that this anti-liberal and anti-Western thread carried over to the present day. In some ways, it's similar to Serbian nationalism.

Anyway, to get to the point: ĽSNS is unashamedly Putinist (one of their MPs splashed water on a Ukrainian flag other MPs held up in parliament -_-) and parrots his propaganda about Ukranonazis, American biolabs and all that. Ditto for SNS and Štefan Harabin's Vlasť. ĽSNS splinters Republika and Christian right Život are equally Putinist but don't shout it from the rooftops, preferring to not applaud Zelensky's speech to EU Parliament or concern troll about the US. Smer concern trolls about not provoking Russia too much and is opposed to weapon deliveries. A prominent Smer MP, tankie Ľuboš Blaha is however a Putinist like ĽSNS (something something horsehoe). Hlas and Sme rodina are, to their credit, very clearly pro-Ukraine and pro-weapons deliveries.

As for the SNS – in theory, there are quite a lot of voters who could vote for them, especially with how unpopular the government is... if they hadn't kept Andrej Danko as leader. Danko used to be a fairly popular figure – SNS was polling at like 15% after they joined the Fico III cabinet in 2016 – but in the summer 2017 he almost broke up the coalition in what was probably a misjudged stunt to make him look like he's getting something out of Smer and it's been going downhill since. He's also a terrible public speaker: he's become a national laughingstock and even apolitical people know him as that idiot who can't speak a sentence without saying something stupid. "No human can give as much love to a human as only a human can give to a human" and all that.

SNS has come back from under 5% in the past and IMO they could do so again, but not until they get a different leader.

My understanding is that the SNS' big advantage was always sitting on a massive pile of dodgy money that can be splashed on campaigns, so they might have a chance. But I expect Estrella will know much more.

Actually I don't know much more IIRC they did have a lot of bilboards in 2016 and 2020, but according to the only recent-ish article I found, right now they claim to have only €500,000 in assets, half of which is the state subsidy. Maybe everyone is so focused on the big fishes that they flew under the radar.

[Estrella]

Apropos of nothing, but David coming here made me think of a(n admittedly pretty silly) comparison:

Czechia and the Netherlands: Protestant and often radically so but with a Catholic south, country has a long history, economically liberal, socially libertarian but politically incorrect, politics prone to weird populism but otherwise level-headed governance, a reputation for being stingy and direct.

Slovakia and Belgium: Catholic, country is a recent creation, economically more leftist/populist, socially conservative, politics prone to extremism, a reputation for being more corrupt and inefficient, terrible infrastructure, the further you go the more incomprehensible the dialect is, the south speaks the language of the southern neighbour.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Actually I don't know much more IIRC they did have a lot of bilboards in 2016 and 2020, but according to the only recent-ish article I found, right now they claim to have only €500,000 in assets, half of which is the state subsidy. Maybe everyone is so focused on the big fishes that they flew under the radar.

Huh, someone had told me their upper brass were tied to all sorts of dodgy business interests.

[Estrella]

Actually I don't know much more IIRC they did have a lot of bilboards in 2016 and 2020, but according to the only recent-ish article I found, right now they claim to have only €500,000 in assets, half of which is the state subsidy. Maybe everyone is so focused on the big fishes that they flew under the radar.

Huh, someone had told me their upper brass were tied to all sorts of dodgy business interests.

There was a case a few years ago when some businessmen close to SNS were arrested for agricultural subsidy fraud, so maybe it was that.

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

Why Nicholsonova left SAS?

[Estrella]

Why Nicholsonova left SAS?

Because of a dispute with Remišová about EU funds. Back in 2021, Nicholsonová said (correctly, it turned out later) that Slovakia lost one billion in funding after Remišová's ministry fxcked up the allocation, Remišová hit back and Nicholsonová quit out of frustration. She is IMO genuinely principled and is just an MEP so she didn't have much to lose anyway.

Not what you asked, but interesting nevertheless: Nicholsonová's ex-husband Tom Nicholson is a well-known investigative journalist with a pretty wild life story. He was born in the UK, grew up and studied in Canada, edited an Ontario local newspaper and wrote for the National Post. In the early 90s he moved to Slovakia to teach English and started dabbling in journalism here as well. Over the last twenty-five years, he led the exposés of Mečiar's corruption, the Gorila scandal, the murder of Ernest Valko and the Kuciak murder. He played a not insignificant role in the downfall of many politicians, made plenty of enemies including in the intelligence service and a few years ago ended up moving back to Canada.

[Estrella]

I've avoided making this post for a few days so that it doesn't turn out as an incomprehensible rant, and I'm still not sure I succeeded. You'll see why.

On Wednesday, October 12th, there was a mass shooting in front of Tepláreň, a gay bar in Bratislava. Two men died. The perpetrator was a certain Juraj K., the 19-year old son of a former parliamentary candidate for Štefan Harabin's far-right Vlasť. He published a fifty-page homophobic and antisemitic manifesto heavily inspired by Anders Breivik, returned home to his parents (who knew what he did but did not alert the police) and vanished. He was found in the morning, dead.

In any civilized country (see: Norway this June) the reaction would have been swift and universal condemnation. Here... not so much. Some politicians came with very vague statements about how they "condemn all violence", most did not say anything and some really should have shut the fxck up. OĽaNO MP Anna Záborská doubled down on her comments about how "we need to stand up to enemies who threaten the essence of being human... we are going to stop adoptions of children by homosexual couples and registered partnerships." Hlas continues to oppose unregistered cohabitation because, in their view, it would "present a gateway to registered partnership." Robert Fico said that "just like the Kuciak murder, this is being misused for political purposes."

Just about the only politicians whose reaction vaguely resembled that of a human being were the President, some mayors and a small number of MPs. On Saturday and again on Sunday 20,000 people demonstrated in Bratislava. For context, the only other protests of comparable size took place after the Kuciak murder in 2018 and during the Revolution in 1989. The President led the march and gave an emotional speech, on the verge of tears, in what was the clearest demonstration yet that she's the only voice of sanity among the band of fxckwits that run this country.

"I am sorry that our society could not protect your loved ones. I am sorry that some of you cannot feel safe in Slovakia. I am sorry that as members, as people from the LGBTI community you always feel rejected by Slovakia. You belong here, you have value for our society."



She also ordered to put up the rainbow flag in front of the Presidential Palace - something that, if you recall, MPs want to ban. A small number of others joined in: a Slovak state institution posting a rainbow heart on their page seems like something out of another universe (a few years ago the human rights ombudsman caused a scandal by hanging up the rainbow flag in front of her office ffs).

Unlike other politicians, the leader of OĽaNO did not issue any statement in the days after the attack. He only spoke out yesterday, in a Facebook status that the otherwise pretty homophobic tabloid Nový Čas described as "Matovič crashing through rock bottom."

I AM STRAIGHT

I am a man and I feel like a man. 23 years ago I swore at the altar to be faithful to Pavlínka and so far I'm fulfilling my oath and I don't plan to stop until I'm dead. I'm also convinced that children should be taught in families and schools to respect ideals... so that they will have their compass set right in their lives. I'm sorry.

#Don'tBeAshamedOfYourself

Môj zlatý, tebe už fakt jebe.

[CumbrianLefty]

Ugh, this is the alt-right in all its glory folks.

[Estrella]

More developments:

– The attack is now officially being investigated as an act of terrorism.

– The father of the terrorist, whose firearm was used in the attack, went on Marian Kotleba's radio show where he said his son "never hurt anyone." Kotleba then launched into a conspiracy theory about shadowy powers using the attack to manipulate the upcoming regional elections.

– As a silver lining, the nature of the attack means that the police now have significantly more powers to go after other potential attackers. Together with the Military Intelligence, the police launched an operation targeting individuals praising the attack. At least one has already been arrested and charged with participation in terrorism.

– Completely unsurprisingly, an attempt to legalize unregistered cohabitation (little more than access to medical documentation and inheritance) for gay couples failed. 50 MPs voted for: 20 SaS, 17 OĽaNO, 7 Hlas and a handful of others.

– Also unsurprising but a lot more worrying is the backlash to the backlash. There have been at least half a dozen cases of people being physically attacked for wearing a rainbow ribbon. And this is not some fringe phenomenon: several judges wrote an open letter to the President, accusing her of "stabbing the rule of law in the back" by her statements condemning homophobia (yes, really).

[Estrella]

Following the revelation of the attempted assassination of Deputy Prosecutor General that failed only thanks to an accident, the man currently serving a 25 year jail term for the murder of Ján Kuciak admitted that he received orders for the murder of Special Prosecutor Daniel Lipšic and Prosecutor General Maroš Žilinka. Lipšic is the man responsible for the largest corruption investigations, most importantly those involving Marián Kočner and Robert Fico. He was offered €70,000 for Žilinka, €10,000 for every member of Žilinka's family and €200,000 for Lipšic. He and his accomplices were unsure whether to go for it and they were caught before it got past the planning stage.

It's honestly really disturbing that the mafia is so confident of their power that nearly got our own Capaci/Via d'Amelio. 

[Estrella]

The elections are today. Some thoughts and observations:

– There are more posters than I remember seeing ahead of the last parliamentary election. Especially candidates in Bratislava seem to have a lot of money on hand: they have billboards on every corner and Team Vallo, the mayor's party, even took out full-page ads in national newspapers.

– On the motorway out of Bratislava there are billboards saying "Come home to vote, so that you can live well in the East too". This is (I think) why the elections are being held on the weekend before All Saints' Day: it's the kind of holiday where everyone visits their family, including tens of thousands of people from the East who live in Bratislava but aren't registered there.

– Minor controversies and weirdness: a mayoral candidate in Poprad wants to build a metro and Romana Tabák (see upthread) promises free tennis lessons for kids if she gets elected borough mayor.

– In 2018, 43 municipalities held repeat elections: 9 due to a tie in the mayoral race, 23 due to vacancies in the council (less candidates than councillors), 4 due to suspected corruption and 7 where there was no candidate for mayor.

– This year, five municipalities (Ratkovo, Michalková, Brezovec, Pongrácovce, Jakušovce) aren't holding elections because there are no candidates for any position, another six have no candidates for mayor and vote only for councillors while twenty-five have less candidates for councillors than there are vacant positions. Which means there are going to be at least 36 repeat elections in a few months, probably more. Merging municipalities is technically possible but incredibly difficult to force through (see my preview post ^) and these places will likely remain in limbo for years.

– These are however all very small villages. Most municipalities have a lot of candidates: my town of 15,000 has 74 people standing for the local council and the surrounding district has 43 candidates running for its 7 seats in regional assembly. Bratislava has 392 candidates for the 45-member city council and more than 800 running for the borough councils.

– Many (most?) candidates are independents but those who do contest under a party label try to get every endorsement they can. This is a ticket of 12 (!) parties appearing on the regional assembly ballot in my district:

Obyčajní ľudia a nezávislé osobnosti (oľano), nova, kresťanská únia (kú), zmena zdola, Sloboda a solidarita, Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie, Spolu - občianska demokracia, Šanca, Ods - občianski demokrati Slovenska, Za ľudí, Sme rodina, Občianska konzervatívna strana

(by the way, Slovakia has currently 160 registered political parties and a further 15 collecting signatures )

– The polls close at 20:00 CEST, two hours earlier than usual. We'll get the full results by Sunday afternoon.

[Estrella]

One day I'll write some proper analysis of last week's elections, but here's the short version: an unusually high number of incumbents were reelected, the left-nationalist opposition did quite poorly and overall it was just... *yawn*.

But as we learned today, there's another vote coming up on January 21st next year: a referendum. After a string of lawsuits, much childish mudslinging and another round of signature collection that I barely covered here because this shxt has been going on for nearly two years and I've had enough of it, Fico again managed to collect enough signatures for a referendum, this time with two questions:

1. Do you agree that the Government of Slovak Republic should immediately resign?
2. Do you agree that the term of the National Council of Slovak Republic can be ended early by a motion of the National Council or a referendum?

The first question was thrown out by the Constitutional Court for obvious reasons, so only the second one will come to a vote. Dissolving the National Council before the end of its four-year term is very, very difficult (see this post) and changing that isn't a bad idea in itself, but I really can't see people getting as excited for this as for the cancelled referendum on forcing an early election. There's also the issue that even though this question isn't as obviously partisan as the early election one, everyone still sees the referendum as Fico's pet project. In the end, it will probably pass by a huge margin but fall far short of the required 50% turnout. Everyone will claim some kind of moral victory and then forget about the whole thing.

[Estrella]

I'm not Catholic except on paper so I guess it isn't really my diocese, but why have all recent Archbishops of Trnava been such... characters?

Besides all the typical Catholic scandals, the former archbishop of my diocese was literally an agent for the Communist secret service, got rich thanks to manipulated privatizations, embezzled diocese's funds worth millions and orchestrated the extremely controversial firing of his reformist successor for no discernible reason besides him wanting to start investigating corruption. Enough said.

And this is who replaced the fired successor of monsignor Sokol, the man I described above:

Archbishop of Trnava Orosch sends priests a circular doubting if the victims of the attack on Zámocká were really innocent

_{(Zámocká Street being the site of the terrorist attack three weeks ago)}

The Catholic Church was concillatory in its statements after the attack. Chairman of the Conference of Bishops of Slovakia Bernard Bober condemned the act and any expressions of intolerance. He talked about deaths of two innocent people.

Archbishop of Trnava Ján Orosch disagrees with this opinion. In a circular for priests he described his opinion on the murder on Zámocká Street. Without any proof, he polemicises about whether Matúš Horváth and Juraj Vankulič really were innocent victims. He asks if there have been any drug raids in Tepláreň.

Before the 2019 presidential election, Archbishop Orosch warned against voting for Zuzana Čaputová, then the deputy leader of Progressive Slovakia. In a sermon Orosch said that anyone who supports a candidate of an ultraliberal party commits a grave sin.

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

@Estrella HELP HELP!!! Tepša and Zrouda means what?

[Estrella]

@Estrella HELP HELP!!! Tepša and Zrouda means what?

You're not the only one wondering about that. Tepša means "pan" or "baking tray" in some eastern dialects*, which not only makes no sense as an insult but probably isn't where Matovič and Tabák got the word from, since they're from the west**. On the other hand, teplý (literally "warm") is a word much like the English queer: a kind of reclaimed*** slur against gay people. The male gender noun form of teplý is teploš, and if you wanted to turn it into a female form, I can see how you'd come to tepša, even if it's, like, not an actual word. Zrouda is just a weird Slovakified version of Czech zrůda, meaning "monster".

* likely from Hungarian tepsi, where it got from Turkish. Etymology is fun like that!
** Matovič is from Trnava, a city that speaks a very distinctive regional dialect, and you can hear it. Probably doesn't help his perception as... not very classy.
*** see the post above: a gay bar called Tepláreň, or "heating plant".

[Estrella]

So, back in September SaS left the government, leaving Heger in a minority. They presumably expected that distancing themselves from that clown car while not ruling out all cooperation would increase their support and put them in a better fighting position for the 2024 election.

Well, instead of rising, SaS crashed in the polls, losing half of their support practically overnight. The current picture is about 20% for Hlas, 15% for Smer and 10% for Progressive Slovakia, while SaS, OĽaNO, Sme rodina, KDH and Republika are all only a percent or two above the threshold.

Panicked, SaS reached for the break-glass-in-case-of-emergency option and presented a vote of no confidence. Debate on the motion started yesterday and the vote will take place next Tuesday. It needs 76 votes to succeed – an absolute majority of all members, not just those present. Going by the declarations of various government rebels, small party MPs and indies, the numbers look like this:

Confidence (72): OĽaNO 47, Sme rodina 19, Za ľudí 3, Christian Union 1 (Katarína Hatráková), Martin Klus (independent, ex-SaS), Ján Mičovský (independent, ex-OĽaNO)
No confidence (75): Smer 27, SaS 20, Hlas 11, ĽSNS 7, Republika 5, Život 3, Progessive Slovakia 1 (Tomáš Valášek), Sme rodina 1 (Martin Borguľa)
Undecided (3): Martin Čepček (independent, ex-OĽaNO), Slavěna Vorobelová (independent, ex-ĽSNS), Miroslav Kollár (Spolu, ex-Za ľudí)

Vorobelová is still unsure how she's going to vote and Čepček wants to decide based on the parliamentary debate. Kollár's case is more interesting. I guess I could sum it up in one sentence, but here's some background info on People's Front of Judea instead.

Spolu ("Together") is a vaguely centre-right-ish party founded in 2018 by Miroslav Beblavý (ex-Sieť and SDKÚ before that) and Jozef Mihál (ex-SaS, Radičová's Minister of Labour). After the embarassing failure of their coalition with Progressive Slovakia to get into parliament, the two parties parted ways. The founding figures abandoned the party and leadership passed to teacher/journalist/activist Juraj Hipš, who narrowly defeated lieutenant general/NATO functionary Pavel Macko. Macko immediately left Spolu (lol) and founded his own party, Civic Democrats of Slovakia, while Hipš resigned from the leadership soon after, for... reasons.

You see, Spolu presents itself as a liberal, green, socially progressive and pro-European party, which is, er, exactly the same as PS. Hipš propsed that the party should merge into PS, but party delegates rebuffed him and instead elected Miroslav Kollár as the new leader. Kollár is an economist who wrote for various liberal newspapers, sat on the boards of public TV and radio and currently serves as the mayor of Hlohovec. In 2020, he was elected to Parliament for Za ľudí, but he left the party in 2021 out of frustration with the increasingly chaotic management of the pandemic. He joined Spolu and was elected leader. As far as I can tell, the only difference from Hipš is that he's opposed to the merger with PS. This might not be the smartest position, given that Spolu polls somewhere around 1%, but he's sticking to it.

As it happens, Spolu is holding their party congress tomorrow. Besides a speech by irrelevant attention-seeking ex-PM Dzurinda, there will be a vote on how Kollár should vote. If no-one is lying about their intentions, the fate of Heger and Matovič will be decided by a guy who claims to have no clue why he was fired from his party, a neo-Nazi and some people in a hotel ballroom in Senec

[Estrella]

Turns out that the guest list at the Spolu congress also includes an SaS MP, the parliamentary leader of Za ľudí, a former deputy speaker from Za ľudí and... Eduard Heger.

And something I forgot to mention: the budget has only just been finished and needs to be approved by the Parliament – on the same day as the confidence vote. That'll be fun.

[RGM2609]

So the government is likely to fall? And if so what next?

[Estrella]

So the government is likely to fall? And if so what next?

Unless there's some wild turn in the next hour or so (the vote was delayed, again), yes. In which case we'll get an early election. 90 votes are needed to call one, but during the previous crises Kollár said that he'd support one if the government falls apart, so that's where we're probably going.