Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[Antonio the Sixth]

Really bizarre for a country like Slovakia not to have an established mechanism for early elections. Hopefully the next government can make a permanent fix, because I'm sure political instability isn't going anywhere.

[Estrella]

Ján Budaj. A normal young man, with a normal background, normal opinions, in a normal country – until he tried to flee to the other side of the Iron Curtain. Like most, he failed; unlike most, he did not get shot and only ended up as a political prisoner and societal pariah. He ended up working as a boilerman, with a side gig in counterculture. He founded The Temporary Society of Intense Survival, an art group that organized petitions to protect cultural heritage or put up fake posters advertising shows of banned artists.

He quickly turned from a provocative artist into an outspoken opponent of the Communist regime: he signed the Charter 77, edited samizdat environmentalist publications and became the face of the Velvet Revolution.  After the Revolution, he founed Public Against Violence, or VPN, and led it to a victory in the 1990 election. He didn't take office himself: instead, the man his party nominated as the PM of the Slovak half of Czechoslovakia was an unknown corporate lawyer called Vladimír Mečiar. The less said about that, the better.

_{Fun fact: in all of his public appearances during the Revolution, Budaj wore the same knit cap. To this day, that kind of cap is called a budajka.}

Anyway, fast forward to 2016: after two decades of switching between various minor centre-right parties, Budaj – still well-known and widely respected – joined OĽANO. In 2020, he became the Minister of Environment, keeping a mostly low profile except for the panic about bears last year (don't ask). In December, he left OĽANO in protest against Matovič and his increasing unhingedness.

Budaj was in the news on Monday. He proposed a climate law to reduce emissions to 45% of 1990 levels by 2030, create a Council for Climate to oversee the emission reduction efforts of all ministries, and allow citizens to sue the state if these promises are broken. It's a surprisingly progressive bill and it's great to see that some ministers in this corpse of a cabinet take their jobs seriously.

Budaj was in the news on Tuesday too, but for a different reason.

I, the undersigned, Ján Budaj, proclaim that I will keep strict silence about matters that become known to me regarding the anti-State activities of Tomáš Petřivý and Gabriel Levický. I will forward the facts I discover about the antisocial activities of the aforementioned persons to the State Security, orally or in writing.

Ján Budaj, 23 June 1979

Now, to be fair:

It was discovered that codename DOMOVNÍK does not provide complete infromation and engages in organization of illegal cultural activities without knowledge of his handler. In order to remove the stated shortcomings, appropriate measures have been organized.

Budaj was delisted as a collaborator and in 1987 he was declared a nepriateľská osoba ("enemy person"). He said that he never gave the ŠtB any information, and I can believe that, but this still leaves a sour taste in many people's mouths.

And now for something completely different. Remember how I mentioned the bears? Well, in recent years the population of brown bear in Slovakia has boomed – from near-extinction to more than a thousand. Which is great, but it led to some... incidents involving humans. Not to worry, on Wednesday Budaj was in the news for the third day in a row: Budaj is thinking of a Tatra version of Jurassic Park. It will be a juvie for bears.

No, that's not tabloid headline fxckery: he proposed a sanctuary for misbehaving bears and called it "a kind of a Jurassic Park."

[Estrella]

Really bizarre for a country like Slovakia not to have an established mechanism for early elections. Hopefully the next government can make a permanent fix, because I'm sure political instability isn't going anywhere.

I forgot to mention it, but last week the Parliament somehow managed to force through a constitutional amendment that puts in place a mechanism to call an early election... except it doesn't change anything. You still need 90 votes as before, the only thing that changes is that it will be done by a motion instead of an ad hoc constitutional act.

Gratuluji!

That's Czech, but close enough

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

Exactly, western brothers sending regards

[Estrella]

Kaliňák and Brhel were charged with bribery worth €1.1 million

Fico's right-hand man and long-serving Minister of Interior Robert Kaliňák, together with Smer-adjacent oligarch and former HZDS MP Jozef Brhel were mentioned in the testimony of František Imrecze, the former director of Financial Administration (the organization in charge of collecting taxes and excise, investigating smuggling etc). Before Imrecze was appointed as the head of FA, he made some €15,000 a month in IT industry; the pay in his new job was "only" €4,000 a month. Imrecze alleged that Brhel paid him the difference, in return for being able to appoint his people to positions in the FA. Imrecze says that when he contacted Kaliňák looking for a civil service job, Kaliňák offered him this and even came up with the idea for "compensation". Smer is obviously denying everything and talks of a political conspiracy to discredit the party before the election.

[Estrella]

The Slovak Air Force has eleven MiG-29 fighter jets. They're nearly fifty years old, only half of them are actually capable of getting off the ground, they're running out of spare parts, most of the personnel capable of maintaining them has long since retired and there are fewer pilots than planes.

Obviously something needed to be done, and so after a decade plus of arguing about whether we should go for Gripen or F-16, in 2018 the Pellegrini government finally decided to order fourteen F-16s. Which means that now we have 11 MiGs that we could give to Ukraine (admittedly half of them will probably have to be towed there, but spare parts are better than nothing). Indeed, during his visit to Brussels, Zelensky directly asked Heger for the planes.

There are some arguments against this. There's a reason why Slovakia refused to send its S-300 battery to Ukraine before the Germans came here with a Patriot: it was literally the only functional long-range anti-aircraft missile system in the country.* This is a similar situation - the new F-16s won't arrive until next year, and that's the reason why Smer opposes giving away the MiGs (I for one doubt it's the actual reason for Robert "the war serves American interests" Fico). Meanwhile Pellegrini is cosplaying as Scholz and saying that we should give the MiGs to Ukraine only if we aren't the first to do it.

There's another problem. Because Heger lost the confidence vote, he's now leading a caretaker government with restricted competences. There's a saying that the only thing a caretaker government can do is kúriť a svietiť ("keep the heating and lights on"). Nobody is really sure if the government actually has the power to send the planes. After the fight over the early election, expect another round of constitutional clusterfxkcs, Heger's incompetence and Fico's hysteria.

_{* It was stationed in Nitra, allegedly because from there it can (just) cover the airspace above both of Slovakia's nuclear power plants. That tells you all you need to know about the state of our army.}

[Estrella]

I'm trying to imagine this happening in any other country and I just... look, imagine Lindsay Hoyle opening an exhibition on the life of John Lennon and doing this:

Kollár brags about faking Žbirka's autographs and stealing a painting.

It was supposed to be a short speech, in which [Speaker of Parliament] Boris Kollár talks about his memories of the late Miroslav "Meky" Žbirka [a very popular singer]. He shared his experiences of counterfeiting Žbirka's autographs and how, back in the 1980s, he stole a painting.

"To this day I have a painting from 1988 from Považská Bystrica, I will gladly lend it for an exhibition. I literally unmounted it from the wall, I'm not sure if it was theft, but I relocated it to my place," said Kollár a few days ago on the opening of an exhibition of Žbirka's artefacts under the name Roky a dni (Years and Days).

He also told a story describing how the singer helped him when he was under criminal prosecution.

[...]

In a telephone interview, the Speaker's spokeswoman corrected the statements. Allegedly, it wasn't a painting, but a poster Kollár took from a theatre.

[...]

"Meky signed the first 50 cards and then told me: listen, give it out to fans. I went backstage and there I found another 300 cards. When the concert ended, I came up to him and gave him a stack of money. He asked me what it was. I told him, you know what, I signed them and sold them for five crowns each, this is your half of the money" described Kollár another of his experiences with the artist. The Speaker ended his speech with "there are more stories, but I'd rather not tell them."

The article then goes on to say something which is already well-known, but still quite interesting. I've touched on how Kollár has a very shady past, but I didn't go into details, so here they are:

Kollár's past activities have long created suspicion. In the 90s he was close to Bratislava mafia and a subject of interest for the counterintelligence service, then called the Office for Protection of Constitution and Democracy. The documents of this service mention Kollár as the sidekick of Peter Steinhübel. The report describes how Steinhübel organized a shipment of six kilograms of heroin: "for organization of the shipment he used his sidekicks Roman Deák, Boris Kollár and Ján Daniš."

I've actually mentioned Steinhübel in this thread, in the post explaining Slovakia's local government. He was... quite a character.

Districts have no elected councils and the chairman of district office (prednosta okresného úradu) is appointed by the cabinet on advice from the Minister of Interior. It isn't a very political position these days, but in the 1990s, some of Mečiar's appointees turned their districts into little fiefdoms and more than once colluded with the local mafia clans. The most infamous case is Vladimír Bachleda, a very influential figure within HZDS and chairman of the Poprad district office. Thanks to his friendship with Mečiar, he er... acquired a majority stake in Tatravagónka Poprad, a local railcar manufacturer. In 1997, he got into a drawn-out dispute with Bratislava mafia boss Peter Steinhübel. Bachleda thought that his political influence would protect him and misinterpreted Steinhübel's remark to "get him down" as a threat to remove him from the district chairmanship. In May 1997, Bachleda was kidnapped, forced to sign over the factory to Steinhübel and murdered.

(Steinhübel himself didn't last much longer than Bachleda - he was gunned down in 1999)

[Estrella]

I realize this thread is becoming a Meclazine-style "Meanwhile in Slovakia", but how could it not when things like this keep happening:

Governor of Košice Region has been arrested, together with a businessman who sold the region overpriced thermometers

The National Criminal Agency arrested the governor of Košice Region Rastislav Trnka and multiple other people in the matter of manipulation of public procurement. For a year, the police has been investigating the purchase of outdoor thermometers in which Trnka was involved. The region bought them for approximately €180,000 from Richard Reday, a well-known businessman and a friend of Trnka. This was twice the price paid by Nitra or Banská Bystrica regions for the same thermometers from the same manufacturer.

An accountant spent millions of municipal money on a fortune teller unnoticed

Finances stored in the reserve fund of the municipality of Šarišské Michaľany, intended for investments, disappeared over a period of a few months in 2020. A total of €1.3 million was transferred from municipal accounts to a man pretending to be an online fortune teller. Psychically unstable accountant Zuzana C. was trying to use mystical and esoteric rituals to solve her personal problems.

Another municipality swindled due to a fortune teller

Not just Šarišské Michaľany, but also neighbouring Ostrovany has been hit. The former accounant Zuzana C. worked there as chief comptroller. After the scandal in Šarišské Michaľany, Ostrovany discovered €107,900 missing from their accounts. The discovery was prompted by a late payment notice on a €20 mobile phone bill.

[Estrella]

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.

Well, six weeks later, Dzurinda left the Blue Coalition after accusing the leadership of incompetence and founded a party of his own called, I shxt you not, The Blues - European Slovakia.

[Estrella]

It's official.



The Democrats will consist of the hitherto Spolu/Modrá Koalícia (providing the party structure and 1 MP), Andrea Letanovská (MP, ex-Za ľudí), František Oľha (mayor of the third biggest city in Slovakia and leader of Šanca, a minor centre-right party with some strength in local government) and, more importantly, Ján Budaj's OĽaNO splinter group Civic Democratic Platform (11 MPs), joined by an unclear number of OĽaNO MPs, every single minister from OĽaNO except Matovič himself and, of course, the Prime Minister.

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

So, uh, what impact does this have on the government?

[Estrella]

So, uh, what impact does this have on the government?

Not much. The government is already a caretaker government, it has virtually no legal power or willpower to embark on any big project or change of course, it can't lose a vote of confidence because it's already been voted out, you can't cobble together 76 MPs to vote for another PM, if Matovič or any other minister resigns his position gets automatically taken over by Heger, the election date is official now and nothing can be done about that... yeah, not much.

As for the impact on politics – I wouldn't count out OĽaNO and SaS just yet, they're well-established parties with well-known leaders and a core of support, but they are going to have to fight hard to stay in parliament after September. PS and perhaps Hlas might find themselves losing some voters to the Dems and the 4-5% who vote for KDH come hell or high water will go wherever their party goes, whether they run alone or together with Heger.

[Estrella]

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).

[Storr]

https://twitter.com/CalibreObscura/status/1639032536277094400?s=20

[Estrella]

Six months to go. It certainly doesn't feel like it: everyone (especially the government) acts like there's no point to doing anything, as if the election were right around the corner.

Here's the average of March polls:

Smer 17.1%
Hlas 16.4%
PS 12.3%
Republika 8.3%
Sme rodina 7.7%
SaS 6.5%
KDH 6.1%
Demokrati 4.9%
OĽaNO 4.7%
Szövetség 3.5%
SNS 3.5%
ĽSNS 2.0%
Za ľudí 1.9%
Magyar Fórum 1.2%

Hlas loses its narrow but consistent edge over Smer and now the two parties are tied, perhaps due to Fico continuing his tradition of getting in the news by ranting on press conferences about every topic imaginable while Pelle stays on the sidelines. Progressive Slovakia keeps rising: they're getting close to what they were polling in mid-2019 after their victory in the European election, likely thanks to liberal urban voters who might have been enthusiastic about the Matovič government at the start (if less so about the man himself) but quickly soured on it due to the populism, social conservatism and general chaos. They, of course, significantly underperformed their polls in 2020, but I don't think that's going to happen this year: for PS voters, SaS, Dems and Za ľudí are all too tainted by their role in the government, Hlas is too Smer-y and everyone else is out of the question.

On the centre-right, well... the party that won the last election and the party led by the Prime Minister could both end up out of Parliament. The Democrats are shaping up to be a failure (even if they did cross 5%, it would be a pathetic result), but they are taking enough from OĽaNO to push them under 5% too. SaS is holding on suprisingly well – there's apparently enough centre-right voters who find PS too wishy-washy/unserious/unproven/SJW-y while thinking everyone else is insane. KDH is up only a point or two from their 2020/2016 results, but it would be enough to enter parliament.

Republika and Sme rodina are staying where they've been for the last year. Szövetség (the merger of most Hungarian parties) is nowhere close to the 10-12% SMK used to get – in fact, it's only getting half of what its constituent parties won in 2020 and will probably fail to enter parliament. SNS would be doing better if it had literally anyone else than Andrej Danko is leader, but if they run a good campaign there's a chance they could get in. ĽSNS is basically dead after nearly all of their voters departed to far-right-but-not-openly-Nazi Republika. Za ľudí is basically dead after 9 of their 12 MPs departed to SaS, OĽaNO, PS and Spolu Modrí Democrats. Other parties are occasionally polled, but only get negligible numbers.

[AustralianSwingVoter]

On the centre-right, well... the party that won the last election and the party led by the Prime Minister could both end up out of Parliament.

Slovak Politics speedrun Any% world record.

[Ex-Assemblyman Steelers]

When we can expect candidate's lists?

[Estrella]

When we can expect candidate's lists?

The deadline is July 2.

[Logical]

Why don't the Hungarians support Hungarian minority interest parties anymore?

[Estrella]

Why don't the Hungarians support Hungarian minority interest parties anymore?

Slovak nationalists moved on from scaremongering about Hungary to imitating it, that's the most important thing. But it's also because of the decay of the Hungarian parties. The old SMK was a cohesive party with a strong machine, many mayors and councillors, connections to cultural organizations and actual accomplishments under their belt. Even though SMK, Most and some of the other splinters have reunited now, they're seen (rightly IMO) as a bunch of feuding, self-obsessed has-beens.

[Estrella]

Since we're talking about Hungarian parties, here are the maps of their support in 2020. As a reminder, MKÖ got 3.9% and Most-Híd 2.1%. Spot the difference. Hint: top right.

I was pretty bemused when I saw a Rusyn-language billboard for Most in Prešov a few years ago. Sure, when the party was founded it was supposed to represent cooperation between ethnicities or whatever, but that sounded like nice buzzwords and not much more. There were a few non-Hungarians voting for Most, but I wouldn't have expected them to stay in 2020 when the party was completely discredited. Lo and behold:

Oľšinkov / Вільшинків: Smer 31%, Most-Híd 15%
Ondavka / Ондавка: Most-Híd 35%, Smer 25%
Krajná Bystrá / Крайня Быстра: Smer 28%, Most-Híd 28%
Miroľa / Мироля: Smer 40%, Most-Híd 16%
Medvedie / Медведже: Smer 35%, Most-Híd 18%
Nová Sedlica / Новоселіця: Smer 37%, Most-Híd 20%

Of course, "Rusyns for Most" isn't a solid ethnic vote and the party's results are pretty random:

Medzilaborce / Міджілабірцї (47% Rusyn): Most-Híd 1%
Kamienka / Камюнка (58% Rusyn): Most-Híd 1%
Ňagov / Няґів (87% Rusyn): Most-Híd 0% (zero votes)

[Estrella]

Average of the April polls. The comparisions are to the numbers I posted a month ago – not that the decimals mean much.

Smer 19.0% [▲1.9]
Hlas 15.6% [▼0.8]
PS 13.7% [▲1.4]
Republika 8.4% [▲0.1]
SaS 6.6% [▲0.1]
Sme rodina 6.4% [▼1.3]
OĽANO 6.0% [▲1.3]
KDH 5.8% [▼0.3]
SNS 3.7% [▲0.2]
Demokrati 3.7% [▼1.2]
Szövetség 2.5% [▼1.0]
ĽSNS 1.9% [▼0.1]
Za ľudí 1.9% [ ━ 0.0]
Others 4.8% [▼0.3]

Fico is seemingly trying to go the Pellegrini route of being all things to all people, an attempt somewhat hampered by the fact he's still kinda nuts. On the one hand, he said he supports Ukraine's membership in the EU and presented Smer's manifesto to ambassadors from EU, NATO and the UK; on the other hand, he blamed the US for "performing GMO experiments on Ukrainian grain that gets shipped to Slovakia". At least his economic platform is reasonable, though with the caveat that there's a lot of fluff without anything concrete: more state intervention without hurting competitiveness, "welfare state with a market-oriented and ecological economy", things like that. As for the other parties, the only relevant trend is "lol Dems".

In "lol Slovakia" (or perhaps "lol OĽANO") news, MP Martin Čepček presented a bill that would ban porn. Or, more accurately, it would oblige people who want to watch porn to, er, submit a signed notarized request to the broadcaster.

[Estrella]

Twelve little Soldier Boys went out to dine; Eleven got frizzled up and then there was one.

A brief history of Za ľudí / For the People:
• September 2019: ex-President Andrej Kiska founds the party.
• February 2020: In the parliamentary election, Za ľudí wins 5.77% of the vote and 12 seats.
• March 2020: Za ľudí joins the Matovič cabinet and gets two ministries.
• August 2020: Kiska hands over the leadership to Remišová, officially for reasons of health.
• February 2021: Miroslav Kollár leaves Za ľudí for Spolu.
• March 2021: Tomáš Valášek leaves Za ľudí for Progressive Slovakia.
• May 2021: Andrea Letanovská leaves Za ľudí for Spolu.
• September 2021: Mária Kolíková, Vladimíra Marcinková, Michal Luciak, Marek Hattas, Vladimír Ledecký, Ján Benčík and Tomáš Lehotský leave Za ľudí for SaS.
• April 2023: Juraj Šeliga and Jana Žitňanská leave Za ľudí for Democrats.
• Today:

[RGM2609]

My question would be, what would you say the odds are of a government not including Smer following the election? Conversely, if Slovakia does end up with a Smer-led government, would Fico as Prime Minister be acceptable to the other parties?

[Estrella]

My question would be, what would you say the odds are of a government not including Smer following the election? Conversely, if Slovakia does end up with a Smer-led government, would Fico as Prime Minister be acceptable to the other parties?

Until a few months ago I'd have said zero, but now I'm starting to be less sure. The Fico-Pelle divorce was pretty amicable at first and they cooperated on things like collecting signatures for the referendum, but relations between the two seem to have gotten dramatically worse now. Of course, this could be ironed out after the election and I'd still say that Smer+Hlas+someone else (Sme rodina or, less likely, Republika) is the most likely coalition. There were some rumours of a possible Hlas-PS-SaS coalition, but such a government would end terribly for everyone involved: Hlas aren't Western European socdems.

As for the second question, I think Fico as PM would be acceptable to any party that would join a coalition with Smer in the first place, especially as he seems to be moderating somewhat.