Slovak Elections and Politics: presidential runoff on 6 April 🇸🇰

[locked_out]

Is there a clear successor government in waiting? Seems like there is a pretty unclear situation outside the three left (ish) parties.

[Estrella]

Is there a clear successor government in waiting? Seems like there is a pretty unclear situation outside the three left (ish) parties.

Just to clarify: neither Smer nor Hlas are even left-ish, even though they both have "Social Democracy" in their names and are direct descendants of the ruling Communist Party. Smer has radicalized to the point they're rhetorically indistinguishable from the far-right "pinky promise we're not Nazis" Republika. Hlas, on the other hand, is trying to be a mushy centrist all-things-to-all-people blank slate where everyone can project what they want. Neither really presents themselves as left-wing and while they do ocassionally talk about more money for this or that in a vaguely socially concerned way, but this hardly marks them out among Slovak parties.

Anyway, to answer your question, the obvious combination is Hlas+Smer+someone else. That someone would be most likely either Sme rodina or Republika, more likely the former. But anything can happen – most politicians here are whores who will happily do the opposite of what they promised before the election if they get a chance to stick their fingers in the till join the cabinet.

[Estrella]

Prime Minister is thinking about resigning. Government's powers wouldn't be limited as with a no confidence vote, but President could name a new one.

Eduard Heger is considering a resignation before the confidence vote. [...] This has been confirmed by multiple sources from within the coalition. Parliament will vote on Thursday at 17:00. [...] According to an OĽaNO MP, the question is not whether the government falls, but whether it loses the confidence vote or the PM resigns of his own accord.

[Estrella]

Matovič is now saying he's going to resign as Minister of Finance, if SaS withdraws the no confidence motion and votes for the budget.

Yeah, this ain't gonna work.

[Estrella]

There was apparently a plan to avoid a confidence vote by voting for an early election instead, but it didn't work out. OĽaNO's point of order to hold the vote on early election before the confidence vote was defeated 74-76 after two Za ľudí MPs voted against.

The confidence vote was supposed to be held a hour and a half ago, but it keeps being delayed. In the meantime a third Sme rodina MP defected to the opposition, a certain Patrick Linhart.

[Estrella]

Just before the vote, Sulík returned to the chamber, stood up and told an absolutely buck wild story about how Matovič allegedly went to the President, handed in his resignation and then said he changed his mind and ripped it out of an aide's hands. OĽaNO caucus leader then said something along the lines of "not participating in opening the way for mafia to come back to power" as all of their MPs stood up and left the chamber. Kollár came up with a very election-campaigny apology for "all this chaos" and said he "won't hold anyone's vote against them."

The result: government falls 78–20.

[Logical]

lol.
lmao even.

[Former President tack50]

Small question, has the old cordon sanitaire against L'SNS fallen, since it seems Republika is not subject to it anymore?

[Estrella]

Small question, has the old cordon sanitaire against L'SNS fallen, since it seems Republika is not subject to it anymore?

Yes-ish. It hasn't fallen against ĽSNS, but since the split they've been polling at 2% and are increasingly irrelevant. While Republika isn't all that different from ĽSNS under the hood, they are careful to distance themselves from the overtly Nazi elements in their old party, and talk more about immigrants and Christianity rather than Jews or Jozef Tiso or whatever. Similar things can be said about Život, a fundamentalist KDH splinter with a few MPs elected on ĽSNS lists. Tarabovci, or Tarabists, as Život is usually called after their leader Tomáš Taraba, has occassionally voted with the government. Not without controversy though – the two Za ľudí MPs who voted against the point of order mentioned a few posts above said they disagreed with making agreements with Taraba, whose party voted for it.

[Estrella]

Ten OĽaNO MPs left the party. They're all members of the Civic Democratic Platform, a liberal faction within the party that has been increasingly critical of Matovič's antics. The group is led by Ján Budaj, now the Minister of Environment but better known as one of the leaders of Velvet Revolution. For now, they're sitting as members of Budaj's old one-man party.

On a press conference after yesterday's vote, Sulík somewhat surprisingly said he's against an early election, but that might not end up meaning much. Kollár spent today negotiating with other party leaders and he says he expects to get the 90 votes he needs to call it. Fico wants to get it over with ASAP and hold the vote on Monday (something something broken clock).

[AustralianSwingVoter]

So what's happening with Fico's referendum now the government has fell?

[Estrella]

SaS agreed with Heger that if they vote for the budget, Matovič will resign, this time presumably for realsies. Oh, by the way, that story Sulík told about Matovič changing his mind about his resignation and tearing the paper out of the hands of an aide was officially confirmed by the presidential office.

Also, this: Heger: Sulík asked me if we're interested in building a new 76 on the basis of the original coalition. Not that my personal opinion matters much, but I used to think of Sulík as a competent administrator who might be a... difficult person, but still miles better than Matovič. I still think he was a good minister, but he's showing himself to be no better than his old boss. Leaving a government, collapsing it because it hurt you in the polls, blocking a snap election and trying to work your way back into the same government is just ridiculous.

So what's happening with Fico's referendum now the government has fell?

Still going ahead. FWIW, I see the referendum as little more than an ego trip and/or election campaign for Fico and wanted to ignore it, but if Sulík and the government keep doing this sh/t, I might go out and vote just out of spite.

[Estrella]

A late Christmas gift for y'all.

[Estrella]

Happy 30th birthday to Slovakia! 🇸🇰 🥳 🎉

[Estrella]

This post is sponsored by the phrase "political culture".

On New Year's Day, President and the PM had their traditional televised speeches. Heger explicitly mentioned we shouldn't discriminate against anyone based on the colour of their skin or sexual orientation, something pretty out of character for a conservative Catholic in a country where anyone who talks about discrimination is dismissed as an out of touch fringe activist. Matovič, a very, er, unstable person at the best of time, did not take this well. At all.

Let's consider what happened after the killing of two innocent guys in front of [gay bar] Tepláreň. One after another, every progressive pawn started a giant and perfectly sophisticated manipulation. In unison they ignored the fact the main target was the straight prime minister (a test of truth - can you imagine them doing this manipulation if the target was the president herself? Hah. They'd be doing pilgrimages to her house every day as if she was the Virgin Mary.)

Chloe Cole, a girl that has become a symbol in USA of the dangers of brainwashing children by LGBTI+ ideology. I would not be able to live with the feeling that we allowed this kind of perverted stupidity in Slovakia.

Former leader of KDH Alojz Hlina responded with a buckwild status (you can read it in the linked article) in which he made fun of, among other things, Matovič's dialect, the way he compared himself to Mother Theresa, his use of the very childish word "pipík" ("peepee") and ended it with a prediction of "a disgusting election fight that will be about peepees, Mengele and the horsemen of the Apocalypse".

More seriously, Matovič was met with general outrage and very clear condemnation from many of his party colleagues, including Heger himself. It's just rumors for now, but there's talk of how this might have been the last straw for Heger and a serious split in OĽANO is on the way.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

It's just rumors for now, but there's talk of how this might have been the last straw for Heger and a serious split in OĽANO is on the way.

What better time for a split than when you’re polling at 6%. If you don’t like that you don’t like Slovak politics.

[Estrella]

I'm happy to say that the leader of the largest party in government has gotten to work to find a solution to the political crisis, either to build a new majority or call an early ele- oh who the fxck am I kidding. Terf Island just gained a new resident:

PROPAGANDA AND BUSINESS ... and thousands of lives destroyed.

More than 8 thousand young people in Britain are waiting for gender surgeries and procedures. The number of people waiting has grown by 2,400 in a decade. New data from the largest British state-sponsored clinic offering sex change procedures in minors shows that thousands of young people are waiting for these procedures, informs Reuters. According to data published by the Tavistock clinic in July, more than 5,000 children and adolescents seeked these procedures in 2021 and 2022. [...]

IMPOTENCE OF COURAGE

Some people can close their eyes at the (in)correct moment and not see evil for their own benefit. Not because they're incapable of seeing, they see it well, but if they pretend they don't, they gain from it. Unfortunately. In politics, this behaviour is even more dangerous. People elect us to protect justice, not to trade it for personal gain.

Unfortunately, I see many such people in politics. Someone pretends not to see evil to get on the party list. Another does so because he literally shxt himself in advance from a potential lynching from the pro(ag)gressive media.

It's the same with the topic of the agressive LGBTIXYZ+ propaganda. Those, from whom you'd expect bravery and flipped tables in the temple are cowardly keeping quiet because they're afraid. They're quiet because they value an approving splash from the Daily Hatred [a pun on Denník N, a liberal newspaper] more than destroyed lives of thousands of children.

Trading your conscience and the fight for justice for fulfilling the wishes of media manipulators is the road to hell, you chickenshxt gentlemen.

Matovič published about a dozen statuses like this just this week. This is the last one I'm putting here, I promise. For context, it references Fico's press conference in which he condemned President's reaction to the terrorist attack last autumn and randomly started talking about how he's "a heterexual [sic] who likes beautiful women".

Fico foiled my plans today. He publicly admitted he's a "HETEREsexual" ... hmm, so there aren't 73 sexes, but 74? 🤔

... by the way, does anybody know what makes this sex different from the others, besides stealing common property and having mafioso lovers?

Many things contribute to making Slovak politics absolutely fxcking cursed, but an underrated factor is that politicians use Facebook instead of Twitter. I'd much rather these people were forced to fit their unhinged screeds into a few hundred characters instead of writing pretentious novels thinking they're the next Nietzsche.

[CumbrianLefty]

Twitter is overall a negative thing, but there's no reason why it *has* to be.

Facebook, however, is an utter abomination with no redeeming features.

[Estrella]

It's just rumors for now, but there's talk of how this might have been the last straw for Heger and a serious split in OĽANO is on the way.

Well, it seems that there really might be something to this. Sme, a centre-right newspaper with good sources on that side of politics ran a detailed article summarizing all sorts of theories coming from the rumour mill. Here's the gist of it:
- OĽANO will hold a party congress on January 20, where a vote to remove Matovič from leadership will be held. It will likely fail, serving as a convenient excuse for Heger to leave.
- Heger's splinter would be the fulcrum of a new centre-right alliance, a project spearheaded by ex-PM Mikuláš Dzurinda. One of those two will be the leader.
- Minor centre-right parties Spolu and ODS are likely to join, as are the MPs around Ján Hudaj who left OĽANO a few weeks ago, the centrist Smer splinter Dobrá voľba and a new party led by ex-SaS Lucia Nicholsonová that just started collecting signatures.
- Remišová, the leader of Za ľudí, wants to form an alliance with OĽANO, but 2 out of 3 party's remaining MPs disagree and would likely join the alliance.
- KDH is noncommittal so far and doesn't exclude the possibility of joining.
- According to analysts, the new party could get around 10% of the vote - mostly moderate conservatives who find SaS too opportunistic, PS too liberal, KDH too conservative and OĽANO too, er, insane.

[Estrella]

a new party led by ex-SaS Lucia Nicholsonová that just started collecting signatures.

Neither Certainty, nor Centre, nor Renewal. Ďuriš Nicholsonová revealed the name of her new party

Instead of just telling you, I'll give you the translation of Nicholsonová's launch video from the linked article:

Look, I'm fed up with all these political abbreviations. All kinds of civic democrats, Christian democrats, progressive liberals, hard christians. I think it's terribly boring. We'll be simply Apple. Everyone likes an apple. An apple is on every Slovak table, in every Slovak household. An apple has different tastes and different shades. Just like us in Slovakia. An apple is healthy and juicy. Really, everyone likes an apple.

So the new party will be called Jablko. I wonder where that could have come from.

[Estrella]

Well, that was a great use of everybody's time.

Do you agree that the term of the National Council can be ended early through a referendum or a resolution of the National Council?
Yes: 97.51%
No: 1.54%
Invalid: 0.95%
Turnout 27.25% – less than 50%, so the referendum is invalid.

Here's a map – knock off 5-10 points off the turnout, and you get Smer support in the last election. The pattern of support from highest to lowest is basically
1. Smer-voting postindustrial towns (northwest)
2. Smer-voting rural areas (northeast)
3. anti-Smer rural areas (centre-north) and regions around big cities
4. big cities (Bratislava and Košice)
5. Hungarian areas (south)

[MRCVzla]

Well, after the referendum proposed by Fico and his pals failed spectacularly, the parties of the "original coalition" (which together with the liberals of PS managed to boycott said referendum) managed to reach an agreement at least for this time and preferred the " hard way" in order to amend the Constitution in order to allow early elections this year. And they have achieved it with just enough, 92 of the 90 MPs they needed.
https://twitter.com/SlovakiaElects/status/1618235797312000002
(For almost every one of the MPs of the OG coalition, Against Smer plus the fringe right, Hlas abstained)

The rumored date for the new elections would be September 30th.

In parallel, the Spolu party has changed its name to Modrá Koalícia (Blue Coalition) and managed to get Dzurinda, in attempt to atract more minor parties and politicians into that new "moderate centre-right" party/coalition project they building.

[Estrella]

There we go, it's official. In the end the early election will be only six months earlier than a normal one and now we have an eight-month campaign ahead of us. That the parliament voted on it today is presumably not unrelated to President's threats that if the election isn't called by the end of January, she'll fire the whole cabinet and replace them with a technocratic government.

This is how things stand:

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

Gratuluji!

[CumbrianLefty]

Smer just won't go away, eh.