Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Are DV positioning themselves as a centre-right party? I assumed they'd go for a sort of 'we're Smer but nice' approach.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

 Am I reading this correctly that PS Spolu needs 7% and might not get in? and that Smer, LSNS and SR might have a majority? Would they work together to stop an OLANO government from being formed?

I mean, I assume SaS and ZL will supporr OLANO, and those parties slipping over the threshold should make all the difference. Including those parties an OLANO-led bloc has a 77-71 lead in terms of seat distribution. But, yes, Caputova's Progressive party will likely not make it, but I would imagine they would probably be harder to work with than ZL and SaS, who are closer to the right wing, economically liberal position of OLANO.

A weird result, for sure.

Matovič (Oľano) and Kollár (Sme rodina) have been getting friendly with each other since the results came out - the latter doing a 180° from populist rants to saying how he wants to join a government where he can help the people who were left behind etc. He's actually pretty lefty on economics, and Matovič and Kiska (Za ľudí) are very different from the libertarian Sulík (SaS). That makes Oľano+Sme rodina+Za ľudí the most compatible coalition ideologically. 82 seats is more than enough for a defection-proof majority.

Don't Kollár and some of his MPs also have links to organised crime?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

 Am I reading this correctly that PS Spolu needs 7% and might not get in? and that Smer, LSNS and SR might have a majority? Would they work together to stop an OLANO government from being formed?

I mean, I assume SaS and ZL will supporr OLANO, and those parties slipping over the threshold should make all the difference. Including those parties an OLANO-led bloc has a 77-71 lead in terms of seat distribution. But, yes, Caputova's Progressive party will likely not make it, but I would imagine they would probably be harder to work with than ZL and SaS, who are closer to the right wing, economically liberal position of OLANO.

A weird result, for sure.

Matovič (Oľano) and Kollár (Sme rodina) have been getting friendly with each other since the results came out - the latter doing a 180° from populist rants to saying how he wants to join a government where he can help the people who were left behind etc. He's actually pretty lefty on economics, and Matovič and Kiska (Za ľudí) are very different from the libertarian Sulík (SaS). That makes Oľano+Sme rodina+Za ľudí the most compatible coalition ideologically. 82 seats is more than enough for a defection-proof majority.

Don't Kollár and some of his MPs also have links to organised crime?

No idea about his MPs, but Kollár himself likely does - that was overshadowed by other events until now, but it might start coming to the surface.

Who better to clean up after Smer than a somehow even more obvious criminal?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Poland is something different. It's actually very similar to Turkey, in a way. The country is split - the east is poorer, more religious and more nationalist, while the west is richer, less religious and less nationalist, possibly because the people are transplants who moved there after ethnic cleansing, so less 'stick in a mud'-y. Which is how the left ended up with more liberal voters... _{I guess? Polish posters please don't kill me if I got this wrong}

The Poland A/B divide has only moderate relevance to the electoral patterns of the left (prior to 2015, anyway). The SLD's voter coalition before that is best understood as 1) a coalition of the more provincial parts of the west, 2) those parts of the east which were more inclined towards the left during the Second Republic, and 3) those western cities which underwent more resettlement.

That pattern changed in 2015 as ZL made Barbara Nowacka its face and correspondingly shed some votes in 1) and 2) and gained some in 3), but this was distorted by the existence of Razem and .N. In 2019, this pattern was turbocharged. Mortality almost certainly played a large part in this as well, but obviously that's impossible to quantify.

Czechia has two major left parties - the old style communist KSČM (obiously very conservative) and ČSSD (all over the place, with many conservatives like Miloš Zeman, also very anti-communist until recently).

The ČSSD's divisions, I think, are best understood as a divide between those who want the party to be more like Smer and those who would prefer it to be a grey blob of nothing.

Slovenia has a very 'Western' left (SD, Levica and a left-liberal party that gets everyone excited only to get into government and crash and burn four years later, rinse and repeat - currently LMŠ), although there's apparently something about WW2, četniks and partisans that has an impact on the left-right divide, but I don't pretend to understand that.

Mostly the Slovenian centre-left never got over Janez Drnovšek's retirement and death and desperately wants to find a successor to rally around.

Estonia has Social Democrats who are sorta liberal but centre-leftish at best

The Estonian Social Democrats are an odd beast, the appeal seems to be that they look '''''modern''''' and '''''Western''''' rather than anything else.

Latvia has no ethnically Latvian left (except for the irrelavant Progresīvie), and the main left-wing party is Saskaņa, which is probably a front for United Russia.

'Front for United Russia' is overstating it, they are the ethnic Russian party and have had ties to United Russia as a consequence of that but have, AFAIK, been gradually cutting those in their quest to finally get into a government. (lol)

Lithuania has Social Democrats, Labour Party and Social Democratic Labour Party, but I have no idea where they stand.

The Social Democrats are a merger of a post-communist party and a minor emigré outfit and have historically been very light on policy, but those elements which wanted them to be an ideological centre-left party seem to have won out. The SDLP is a splinter party of those Social Democrats who disliked that shift. The Labour Party is an oligarch's plaything and stands for vague populist bullsh!t.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Has he... ripped off the Polish Left's branding?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

This government doesn't seem to be on the verge of collapse yet... having said that, if I were Prime Minister and the leader of the second largest party in my coalition gave a newspaper interview where he trashed all the idiotic policies of his own cabinet and said they're my fault, tacitly admitted that ski resorts are staying open because another coalition partner owns a load of them, said that I "say things despite knowning they are false" and called me "an extremely egocentric and extremely vengeful person"... I'd be starting to get worried.

lololololololol

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

So, if current polling were replicated in an election, who would govern? Hlas is first but I'm guessing Fico would rather burn in hell than let Pellegrini govern. Pellegrini would either need to reach out to the far right a la Smer or a ""grand"" coalition with Olano or SAS. Who are their potential partners?

Who knows if polls will look anything like this when the election comes, but if anything, it's Pellegrini who wouldn't wan't to associate with Fico - his reputation is that bad. Fico has become something like latter day Berlusconi in that his political career is basically over and his main concern is staying out of jail and if being in a Pelle-led government is what it takes, so be it. At the end of the day, though, pragmatism will win and I can totally imagine them being in government together. More complicated coalition calculations are pretty much useless right now, not least because we don't know who will be on speaking terms with whom after the election and five parties (KDH, Za ľudí, Sme rodina, Kotleba, PS) are dancing around the threshold.

Would PS govern with Pellegrini?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

* 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."

Sad!

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

In reaction to ĽSNS leader Marian Kotleba forcing through a change to party statutes that entrenched his position and made him basically unremovable, five MPs and one MEP left the party. Last year, several MPs left ĽSNS after breaking off KDH due to being insufficiently theocratic, running on ĽSNS lists in 2020 and discovering that Nazism might not be compatible with Christian values. This means that ĽSNS lost almost half their caucus - they're down to 9 MPs from 17 at the start of the legislature.

Because only parties that received representation in the last election can create parliamentary groups, these defectors joined the growing group of non-inscrits that now numbers 20 of 150 MPs. And there are going to be more of them - when the previous parliament dissolved, 36 (!) MPs were non-inscrits - one quarter of legislators switched parties during the term, which must be some kind of record.

Have Hlas still not managed to register as a party then?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

They have.

On that note, dare I ask how they are funding themselves?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Apparently a poll came out with L'SNS below the threshold. Are they having problems or is it just a blip?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Former President Andrej Kiska punblished a book - not your typical retired politician ghostwritten autobiography sh-t, but a political thriller titled President - Twenty Days to Survive.

The book describes a thrilling fight of a newly-elected President with the Prime Minister, whose political ambitions were cut short. Taking place with rising tension and war between Russia and Ukraine in the background, the conflict between Prime Minister who dreams of controlling the country and President grows and ends in tragedy. The author uses his personal experiences and provides surprising details from both political and personal life of a head of state.

ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Man, it's been two years already? Yes, it has - we've nearly reached the middle of the term of this car crash of a government. Admittedly the past few months were a little less chaotic than what came before, but they're still about as popular as the plague.

Something not unconnected to the above: the first Smer poll lead in two years

Smer 15.6%
Hlas 13.5%
SaS 13.5%
PS 10.6%
OĽANO 9.5%
Sme rodina 5.7%
Republika 5.6%
KDH 5.0%
ĽSNS 4.1%
Alliance 3.4%
Za ľudí 2.5%
Others 11.0%

1) Polls in Slovakia are shxt, so don't take this one too seriously (or any other poll, for that matter)
2) The number for Smer is actually at or below what they're getting in other polls, it's just that Hlas is weirdly low in this one
3) Yes, the largest party really gets just over 15%
4) All parties in the governing coalition add up to just 31.2%
5) KDH is right on the threshold as usual and the Hungarian Alliance is going nowhere. Both deserve to get left out yet again imho. At least the PS is doing well, though I absolutely expect them to find a way to fxck it up again.

Was it this difficult for Fico to put down Mečiar and HZDS after 2002 as well?

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

https://twitter.com/ZiemowitSzcze11/status/1543985574897500161?t=W4dM5aFJYsWWvB6...

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

Did things between SMER and HLAS cool down, can we respect that coalition in the future?

At the moment I'd describe them as an amicably divorced couple who still run a business together. Unless something weird happens in the next two years (and it very well might!), the obvious coalition after the next election will be Hlas+Smer+?.

I've noticed Polish observers of Slovak politics start to describe the Smer/Hlas split as essentially a tactical maneuver, possibly agreed in advance, to lock down different segments of the electorate. Is this view/suspicion shared by anyone in Slovakia?

[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.

[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.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

I think the thread has covered everything else, so I'll just add I'm a bit stunned by the KDH result. I sort of got used to them polling well and then being swamped by turnout on the day.