Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

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Pretty dire options for a principled leftist. How do you, Estrella, plan on voting? Also, is there much of a difference between PS-SPOLU and Za Ľudí, and are they likely to be allies or coalition partners?

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Ew, I got Smer at 68%, how awful. In the quiz I supported socially liberal policies and minority rights, so I'm actually quite surprised. In any case, I don't care what this quiz says, as there's no way I'm supporting Fico and his goons. Go PS-SPOLU!

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Some quick takeaways:

- Really, horribly, disastrously bad result for Smer: they are set to be halved compared to 2016, which already was an underwhelming number and steep fall from their 44% landslide victory in 2012.

- It's also a catastrophic result for the whole governing coalition: from 49% in 2016, its constituent parties look like they're getting 18-20% tonight. This is a Canada 1993 / Poland 2001 scale of defeat.

- Encouragingly, other nationalists and populists are also having a very meh night: Both Sme rodina and ĽSNS gaining all but crumbs, Vlasť stalling at the start line and SNS falling to an awful 3%.

- At the first glance, Matovič may seem like an acerbic, loudmouthed populist - don't get me wrong, he is one, and I don't really like him as a person, but he's also a policy wonk and ideologically a moderate, mainstream conservative. His victory speech sounded pretty good - like mentioning how he's proud of having Roma and Hungarians on his party's list.

- Three parties are dancing within one point of the threshold: Za ľudí, KDH and MKÖ (the other Hungarian party besides Most). We'll have to wait and see how they end up.

It's a pretty sad reflection on Slovak politics when somebody with a Green Party avatar is cheering on the victory of a "mainstream conservative". Why can't the country just have a normal center-left or social democratic party that isn't completely evil and corrupt?

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* 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

I definitely wonder how a party led by an anti-Hungarian leader in the near past; was able to join a government with the ethnic Hungarian party lol

It's the globalization of populism. The schtick of Hungarian far-right used to be irredentism and reversing Trianon; similarly, the schtick of Slovak far-right used to be yelling about getting in tanks and destroying Budapest.

And then, things changed. The first time I noticed the new SNS leader Andrej Danko was a press conference his party (then out of parliament) held like a week after Charlie Hebdo, where he gave a very impassioned speech about how the Slovak Association of Muslims bought a lot somewhere in Bratislava and they allegedly want to build a mosque there and THIS MUST BE PREVENTED AT ALL COSTS!1!!1! Similarly, Viktor became less interested in Felvidék and more in building border fences to stop the scary browns.

Danko, 2012: "I'd send Slovak supporters of Orbán to jail!"
Danko, 2019: "I envy Viktor Orbán's political power."
 
Those changes laid the ground for that coalition. Most-Híd are basically normal conservatives, but they still governed together because
1. this was the least impractical coalition and
2. power wears out those who do not have it.

In a way I'd say this change in the nature of European populism is a good thing. What tore Europe apart in the 20th century was nationalism that pitted Europeans against other Europeans, but with this sort of "pan-European nationalism" or "globalized populism" (what great oxymorons) there isn't really much risk of that happening again. As I see it, the possibility of another Great War is that great fear which underlays it all, the true raison d'être for the EU. Although it may suck for the temporary stability of the EU and the immigrant populations that that populist anger is now being directed at them, I can't see the great fear being realized anytime soon with this newfound populist unity.

I know you might say that the warmongering language used by Slota or whomever is just for show and the events he describes would never happen in "modern happy peaceful Europe ", but people were saying the exact same thing a hundred years ago. When language like that becomes normalized those ideas can filter into the mainstream; even if Slota himself didn't believe what he was saying I'm sure there were people and politicians who did.