Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

[Estrella]

In March of next year, Slovakia's parliament will reach the end of its term. I decided to create a thread for the upcoming election, seeing that my country's politics is one of the less known ones in Europe and is actually pretty interesting (and amusing ^[1]).

Introduction

Slovakia is a unitary parliamentary republic, with President Zuzana Čaputová as the head of state since June of this year. Outside of formation of government, the constitution grants her very little power and the real leader is the Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, in office since March 2018 and the eight one since Slovakia achieved independence in 1993.

Čaputová and Pellegrini

Slovakia's unicameral National Council has 150 members and is elected every four years by open-list PR in a nationwide constituency. Despite a 5% threshold, there have always been at least six parties represented. The threshold has, however, contributed to a very high number of wasted votes - in 1992, as high as 24% of the vote went to parties below 5%. and the number was 17% in the most recent election in 2016.

The current National Council (in brackets change since the election):
Government (76) : Smer-SD 48 (-1) | SNS 15 (=) | Most-Híd 13 (+2)
Opposition (74) : SaS 20 (-1) | ĽSNS 13 (-1) | OĽaNO 11 (-8) | Sme Rodina 8 (-3) | Independents 22 (+22) ^{an Italian level of party loyalty it seems}

Besides EU elections, other elections that take place are those for 'self-governing regions' ^[2] every four years (last in 2017), municipal elections every 4 years as well (last in 2018) and presidential elections every five years (most recently earlier this year). National Council elections have pretty high turnout by standards of post-communist Europe, although it has fallen hard recently - 59.8% last time round, but it has been over 70% until 2002, and as high as 95.4% in the first free election in 1990.

The Parties

Unlike some other Eastern European countries, Slovakia's party system hasn't consolidated with time, but instead fragmented so much that it's beginning to rival Netherlands or Israel - and unlike those two countries, almost all of our parties are recent creations driven by the personality of their leader, and we don't have even some kind of a block system that would make creating governments easier.

There are a lot of parties with at least some relevance, so I'm not going into too much detail about any one of them. Feel free to ask if you want to know more, though. Here they go - let's start with the government:

Smer-sociálna demokracia | Direction-Social Democracy | Leader: Robert Fico | EP group: S&D
Created in 1999 as a breakaway from Party of the Democratic Left, the succesor to the Slovak branch of Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. Rather unlike other socdem parties in both Western and Eastern Europe - economically left-leaning, raising taxes and expanding the welfare state (Slovakia has the lowest level of inequality in the OECD), socially conservative (putting a ban on same-sex marriage in the constituion), anti-immigration and, from time to time, mildly Eurosceptic. Their founder and leader Robert Fico has managed to combine populism - appealing to lower-middle class, poor and 'left behind' countryside, Communist nostalgics and babky demokratky ^[3] - and more or less responsible economic policy that led to adoption of Euro, good economic growth and decent-ish public services.

This recipe has worked for a long time - Smer has led the government for 11 out of last 13 years. However, Fico is a very polarizing personality, with strong opinions and a tendency for lashing out that gave him a dedicated fanbase but just as strong hatred from opposition. That, combined with a neverending stream of corruption scandals and the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak (likely ordered by some people quite close to him) finally got back to him. Even though he's been forced to resign as PM by massive protest after Kuciak's murder, he stayed as leader and remained the one pulling the strings. Some local organizations from Smer's stronghold in the east of the country are making noises about how he should resign now that he's becoming a liability to the party (which is bloody obvious to everyone at this point) but it looks like Dear Leader will be staying on.

Slovenská národná strana (SNS) | Slovak National Party | Leader: Andrej Danko | EP group: none, used to be EFD
A self-proclaimed heir to the 19th century Slovak National Party, it was for a long time the most odious party in Slovakia. Back then, their only ideology was fire-breathing nationalism and railing against Roma and especially Slovakia's 9-10% Hungarian minority. During all of this period they were led by Ján Slota, a very, er, colourful figure, best compared perhaps to Vladimir Zhirinovsky ^[4]. After he finally retired in 2012, the leadership was handed over to Andrej Danko, who reoriented the party to a more 'standard' radical right course - against Muslims, against EU, pro-Russian etc. The Hungarian thing, which used to be the DNA of the party, has now completely gone - they don't even have a problem with governing together with a Béla Bugár, who used to be Slota's bête noire.

Danko's moderation helped the party for a time, and sent them soaring in polls, until they repeatedly stumbled - incompetent ministers, almost leaving the government in 2017 for seemingly no particular reason, Danko's army rank of captain that he got under some shady circumstances, his plagiarised university thesis, and generally looking like he doesn't have a clue about what's going on around him ^[5].

Most-Híd | Bridge (Slovak) - Bridge (Hungarian) | Leader: Béla Bugár | EP group: EPP
A moderate breakaway from SMK (Party of the Hungarian Coalition/Community) that initially got a support both from Hungarians and some urban liberals, now polling crumbs and looking for a joint list with SMK for the next election. Other than that, bog-standard centre-right: economically liberal, socially all over the place, pro-European.

#Sieť | #Network ^{(#hashtag cuz we kewl!)} | Leader: Radoslav Procházka | EP group: none
A Christian democratic/socon outfit created before the 2016 election, hailed by everyone as leaders of anti-Fico opposition, completely bombed in said election (only barely scraped over the treshold), said 'fck it' and joined Fico's coalition. Promptly fell apart and whatever remained of them joined Most-Híd or the irrelevant SKS (Slovak Conservative Party). RIP.  


^{[1] Admittedly it's amusing in the same way as a train derailment, but still ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
[2] The name is misleading - they have no autonomy, and are absolutely illogical creations with no connection to any historical regions, and were gerrymandered so that none would have a Hungarian minority-majority population. Oh, and let's not forget the beautifully hideous flags
[3] 'grannies-democrats' - old rural women who fanatically supported (beating up opposition journalists with umbrellas and such) Vladimír Mečiar's authoritarian government back in the 90s.
[4] Assorted quotes: presented for your amusement:
"Of course I drink, I'm not an abstainer, I'm not impotent, I'm a normal Slovak"
"Let them lie down into a sewer and be flushed to the deepest sh*t" - to people who didn't vote for him as mayor of Žilina
"If they were at least beautiful. But those ugly ones, often Gypsies, who can infect hard-working Slovak drivers..." - about prostitutes
"We'll fight for our territory, and we won't give a square centimetre to those ing Hungarians...we'll get into tanks and raze Budapest!"
[5] The fact that the only thing he hates more than Muslims is correct syntax and grammar doesn't exactly help either tbh.}

[Estrella]

Sooner or later I'll (hopefully) try to write something about all the other parties,  past governments and the wild ride that is this one. If there's something you'd like to know, ask away! In the meantime, have a poll:

(yes, the largest party really has 16% lol)

[Estrella]

Why have SaS and OLANO fallen in recent weeks (particularly SaS)?
And what are the differences between the two?  Is SaS more libertarian orientated?  Sorry I know you are going to explain the opposition parties later but SaS has always interested me as it is an ally of my party (Tories).

No problem I'll try to explain both the parties and where has their support left.

Sloboda a solidarita | Freedom and Solidarity | Leader: Richard Sulík | EP group: ECR
Founded in 2009 as a Ron Paul-like libertarian party - supporting a flat tax, minimal social security, decriminalizing marijuana, same-sex marriage and such - with a mild dose of Euroscepticism. After the 2010 election, it joined Iveta Radičová's ill-fated centre-right government where their Euroscepticism became louder and louder, until it brought Radičová down after just 15 months by voting against the 'Euroval'. Badly clobbered in the snap election, the party turned into some kind of weird libertalian-nationalists (if we want to compare them to the Tories, something very vaguely resembling Boris Johnson) and adpoted many standard populist positions (no Muslims etc.).

Obyčajní ľudia a nezávislé osobnosti | Ordinary People and Independent Personalities | Leader: Igor Matovič | EP group: EPP
Somehow elected to parliament in 2010 from the last (150th) place on the SaS list, Matovič and his pals (elected from second and third to last places) quickly began causing trouble in the SaS caucus that ended with them leaving the party - which they shouldn't have joined in the first place, given that ideologically they're ordinary Christian democrats: socially conservative and pro-EU. Of course, this being Eastern Europe, the split wasn't caused by policy disagreements, but by Matovič being a paranoid narcissist - throwing accusations of corruption, conspiracies, character assasination and whatnot left and right, despite having many shady dealings himself ^[1]. Understandably, this makes most normal people think of him as an idiot, but he does have a solid fanbase of some 5-10% of voters.

Before 2010, SDKÚ (Slovak Democratic and Christian Union) used to be the favourite party of Bratislava's solidly anti-Fico middle class. After SDKÚ slowly disintegrated in 2010-2016, those voters turned to the least-worst alternatives: SaS and OĽANO. This year, however, two new - and much better - options appeared, and people flocked to them in droves: 

Progresívne Slovensko-Spolu | Progressive Slovakia-Together | Leader: Michal Truban | EP group: Renew Europe (PS), EPP (Spolu)
A coalition of a supposedly left-liberal (PS) and liberal-conservative (Spolu) but really indistinguishable upstart parties that got a big boost with the election of their candidate (Čaputová) to the presidency and their victory in the European elections. Best compared to parties like D66, LibDems or Neos -  socially progressive, economically liberal, vaguely reformist and anti-corruption, which is a perfect fit for urbanites fuming after seven years of Smer rule.

Za ľudí | For the People | Leader: none yet | EP group: none
Founded in June of this year by ex-President Andrej Kiska. Supposedly some kind of technocratic (they call themselves "a party of experts and personalities from regions") inoffensive kinda-conservative-kinda-centrist-liberal-but-not-too-much-that-would-be-scary thing ^[2]. Mind you, the party hasn't even had it's first congress yet, and only thing we know so far are meaningless platitudes (bEttEr hEaLThcArE! beTtER eDUcAtIOn!).
^{[1] I like to think of him as a spiritual succesor to the aforementioned Ján Slota
[2] A good example of Kiska's moderate heroism: his stance on same-sex partnerships ("we all know those people, we know they aren't worse than others, they have to deal with prejudice [...] but we can solve access to medical records without registered partnerships that would create a precedent for same-sex marriage")}

[Estrella]

Here come the remaining relevant parties (sorry Greens, 0.2% ain't 'relevant'):

Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko | ĽSNS | People's Party Our Slovakia | Leader: Marian Kotleba | EP group: Alliance for Peace and Freedom
Nazis. No, seriously. Kotleba likes to tell people to read Protocols of the Elders of Zion, calls the execution of Jozef Tiso a 'shameful murder' and even created his own SA who like to patrol trains 'to stop crime'. He was, shockingly, elected in 2014 as the governor of Banská Bystrica region ^[1]. At least they donate to poor people

Sme rodina | We Are Family ^[2] | Leader: Boris Kollár | EP group: Identity and Democracy
Our own Trumpusconi, Kollár is a fiery nationalist and anti-system populist who succeeded in carving himself a small niche of some 5-10% of voters. He's been trying hard to expand it - spending hundreds of thousands on advertising blitzes, meeting with Marine Le Pen, adressing a Lega rally in Italy (in Italian, no less) and getting Salvini to endorse him, all to no avail.

Kresťanskodemokratické hnutie | KDH | Christian Democratic Movement | Leader: Alojz Hlina | EP group: EPP
Standard Christian democrats - socially conservative, centre-right, pro-EU. Always had a dedicated base in the rural, mouintainous North of the country, and with it came a low ceilling, but high floor of support. Very narrowly failed to get in parliament in 2016, and their leader has been trying some out gimmicky advertising to get them attention.

Strana maďarskej komunity | Magyar közösség pártja | SMK-MKP | Party of Hungarian Community | Leader: József Menyhárt
The K used to stand for Coalition, back when it was led by politician-since-forever and part-time Beto lookalike Béla Bugár. After he left, they failed to enter parliament three times in a row and have basically become a Fidesz satellite, including a copy-paste of their ideology.

Kresťanská únia | Christian Union | KÚ | Leader: Branislav Škripek | EP group: ECR
Self-proclaimed centre-rightists. Their platform seems to be mostly vague platitudes ('Judeo-Christian values'). Not particularly fundamentalist - certainly not like the Dutch SGP, in fact probably indistinguishable from KDH ^[3].

Komunistická strana Slovenska | Communist Party of Slovakia | KSS | Leader: Jozef Hrdlička
Created in 1992 out of the tankie part of the old KSS (non-tankies joining SDĽ, the predecessor to Smer). Randomly entered parliament in 2002 with 6.3% and promptly went back to grave. Still manages to get 1% here and there though.
 
As you can see in the poll up there, there are rumours about some people creating their own parties: national conservative ex-Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Štefan Harabin, Eduard Chmelár, the closest thing we have to Western European hard left, and ex-Smer former health minister Tomáš Drucker. We'll see if they manage to get enough signatures to get on the ballot.
^{[1] 75 years earlier the center of anti-Nazi Slovak National Uprising...
[2] The party's name is a subtle nod to the fact that only his extended family votes for him, given that he's had ten children with eight women
[3] Škripek however leads something called European Christian Political Movement, whose only relevant members are CU and SGP}

[Estrella]

The Story of Slovak Politics
1990-1998: There's no -ism like Mečiarism

Elections 1990 | Turnout: 95.4%
Public Againt Violence (VPN) - 29.4% (anti-communist big tent)
Christian Democratic Movement (KDH) - 19.2%
Slovak National Party (SNS) - 13.9%
Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) - 13.4%
Hungarian Christian Democrats (MKDM) - 8.7% (predecessor to SMK)
Democratic Party (DS) - 4.4% (liberal-conservatives)
Green Party (SZ) - 3.5%
Others - 7.5%

The federal and state elections in 1990 that took place right after the Velvet Revolution were the first free elections in Czechoslovakia since 1946. In Slovakia, VPN-KDH-DS coalition was formed, led by Milan Čič, a former Communist official. Federal President Alexander Dubček recommended appointing an unknown corporate lawyer, a certain Vladimír Mečiar, as the Minister of Interior. Due to some personal conflicts, Mečiar left VPN and founded his own populist and Slovak nationalist party, the Movement for a Democratic Slovakia - HZDS. The government fell apart and an early election was called.

Elections 1992 | Turnout: 84.2%
HZDS - 37.3%
SDĽ - 14.7% (socdems)
KDH - 8.9%
SNS - 7.9%
MKDM - 7.4%
Others - 23.8%

Because of the massive number of votes for parties that missed the threshold, HZDS was only two seats short of a majority. HZDS was joined by SNS. Mečiar - only months after staunchly denying any possibility of independence - did a 180° and, during a single private meeting with the Czech premier Václav Klaus created a roadmap for the dissolution of Czechoslovakia. On January 1st, 1993, Slovak Republic became an independent country - without anyone bothering to actually ask the people.

In his 1994 State of the Union address, the newly elected president Michal Kováč - a HZDS man - criticised Mečiar's authoritarian leanings, which led to the coalition falling apart and an early election. Relations between Kováč and Mečiar froze.

Elections 1994 | Turnout: 75.7%
HZDS+Peasants' Party - 35.0%
Common Choice (SV) - 10.4% (SDĽ plus some irrelevant minions)
Hungarian Coalition (MK) -10.2% (predecessor to SMK)
KDH - 10.1%
Democratic Union (DÚ) - 8.6% (liberal-conservatives)
Union of Workers of Slovakia (ZRS) - 7.3% (populist left ^[1])
SNS - 5.4%
Others - 13.0%

Vladimír Mečiar, Michal Kováč senior and the memorial to Róbert Remiáš

The 1994-1998 term was to become the most dramatic one in Slovakia's short history. The HZDS - with their catchy campaign song - cruised to an easy victory and Mečiar again became the PM, with ZRS added to his HZDS-SNS coalition, strongly opposed by President Kováč.

The President's son, Michal Kováč junior, was wanted by Interpol due to some shady financial dealings. Mečiar, with his lackey Ivan Lexa - the newly-appointed head of SIS, Slovakia's intelligence agency ^[2] - decided to used this to blackmail his father. On August 31, 1995, Kováč Jr's Mercedes was stopped on a road near Bratislava. He was pulled out of the car by armed men, blindfolded, forced to drink a whole bottle of whisky and driven to Austria, where he was dropped off in front of the police station in Hainburg. Soon after, the police investigator was sacked and the case was unceremoniously closed - that is until Oskar Fegyveres, a SIS operative and a key witness to the kidnapping, decided to come clean. Afraid for his life, Fegyveres fled to Switzerland. He kept contact with journalists in Slovakia through his friend, Róbert Remiáš. At night on April 29, 1996, Remiáš was driving home, when his car exploded, the bomb being planted by mafia on orders from SIS. Mečiar's statement about the case - which would become a popular catchphrase - was simple: Skutok sa nestal. The act did not happen.

In May 1997, a referendum was scheduled to take place, with four questions. The first three - on entry to NATO, on allowing nuclear weapons and on allowing foreign military bases on Slovak territory - were only hypothetical, as after then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright labelled Slovakia as the black hole of Europe the chance of any integration into NATO or EU was zero. The fourth question, however, dealt with changing the indirect election of President by the National Council to a direct popular vote. Kováč's term was soon to end, and the opposition feared that the parliament would not be able to agree on a successor, which would grant the presidency to Prime Minister Mečiar, giving him near-unlimited power and opening the door on a self-coup. The Minister of Interior took matters in his own hands and ordered that the ballot papers have only the first three questions. However, printing was already in progress, and many four-question ballots were already distributed. The referendum itself was a complete farce - some polling station workers accepted only ballot papers with three questions, some only those with four, some refused to let people vote at all and thanks to opposition's call for a boycott, turnout was only 9.5%. Mečiar had achieved what he wanted. Just hours after Kováč's term expired and he became the interim president, he announced the so-called Mečiar's amnesties that immediately halted all investigations into the Kováč Jr./Remiáš case and the sabotaged referendum.

In the mid-90s, Slovakia's economy ground to a halt. Economic reforms were limited to Mečiar selling off state enterprises to his friends for ridiculously low prices. By 1998, unemployment reached 16%, infrastructure was crumbling ^[3], and Slovakia was staying true to its reputation as the 'black hole of Europe', snubbed from entry to NATO. Police was powerless to stop the spread of mafia - a gang-related shooting, car bomb or a body found in a river took place almost daily. More and more people were growing furious with Mečiar, and the situation came to a head nine days before the 1998 election, when a pro-Mečiar mafioso EnTErEpReNeUR Marián Kočner ^[4] tried to take over the only private TV station in the country, Markíza ^[5]. A small demonstration in front of Markíza's HQ turned into a massive anti-Mečiar rally with thousands of participants, led by a then-unknown MP, a certain Robert Fico. That rally sounded the death knell for Mečiar's regime.

Elections 1998 | Turnout: 84.2%
HZDS - 27.0%
Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) - 26.3% (conservatives - a coalition of KDH, DÚ and other small parties)
SDĽ - 14.7%
SMK - 9.1%
SNS - 9.1%
Party of Civic Understanding (SOP) - 8.0% (anti-Mečiar socdems, basically same as SDĽ)
Others - 5.8%

HZDS narrowly kept their first place, but were ousted by a SDK-SDĽ-SMK-SOP coalition led by SDK's Mikuláš Dzurinda. The era of Mečiarizmus finally came to an end ^[6].

Dzurinda, smashin' authoritarians since '98

^{[1] Led by Ján Ľupták - a very skilled construction worker, but not quite as skilled in leading a political party or being a deputy speaker of Parliament (eugh)
[2] There are some really good books written about SIS in the 1990s, and from them it seems that Slovakia was lucky that SIS was so hilariously incompetent - their agents were constantly told to acquire kompromat on this or that opposition politician, and failed like 90% of the time.
[3] Ministry of Transport probably spent more money on celebrities than on asphalt - like in this clip of Vladimír Mečiar and Claudia Schiffer opening a new motorway.
[4] You're going to want to remember this name...
[5] The public STV was about as trustworthy as Pravda and didn't even pretend to be neutral, so anyone who wanted real news had to watch Markíza
[6] If nothing else, kudos to Mečiar for the way he quit: I loved life and I still love it. I lived fully, worked fully and gave you everything. And what am I supposed to say now? Come, let's sing: With God, I'm leaving you / I never hurt / I never hurt / any one of you. What a pity he's lying through his teeth.}

[Estrella]

Great thread so far, did not know much about Mečiar before this. Gonna be thinking about that amazing goodbye video for a long time. Obviously a bit separate from elections, but are there any significant social movements in Slovakia (labor unions, tenant's rights, climate, feminism, LGBT+, etc.)?

Labour unions are somewhat influential, perhaps because large factories (VW, Kia, Jaguar, Peugeot, US Steel,...) are important to Slovakia's economy, and they are, along with employers' organizations, often invited to neogotiations about economic policy (just recently they started pushing the government to increase the minimum wage by an extra €80/month)

But other than that, unless you count ephemeral protest movements that last a week or two, no, not really. There's a Catholic pro-life group called Aliancia za rodinu (Alliance for Family) that had their brief heyday in 2014-2015, when they gathered enough signatures for an anti-gay marriage/adoption/sex ed referendum, but everybody's forgotten about them now. On the other hand, this year's Bratislava Pride had some 10,000 participants, but that seems to be the extent of Slovakia's LGBT movement - you'd be laughed out of your school if you wanted to create a gay-straight alliance. Frankly, most Slovaks think that democracy means putting a paper in a ballot box every four years and that's it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

So exactly what is the difference between SNS and the more identifying Nazis?

SNS are like your standard national conservatives in style of Le Pen, Salvini or Trump. Maybe a bit more extreme in rhetoric (they want a ban on building any mosques anywhere in the country) but still, you wouldn't catch them dead praising NSDAP. Kotleba, on the other hand, is more similar to parties like Golden Dawn, NPD or Jobbik circa 2010 ^[1]

Given both Hungarian parties are doing cap, who do the Hungarian minority voters vote for if not Most Hid or SMK? Also how are the Hungarians seen by the rest of Slovak society? is there popular antipathy to them?

To illustrate that, here are the results of this year's presidential election in the ~85% Hungarian district of Dunajská Streda: (European elections would be more relevant, but I'm not spending three hours digging through that godawful official results website)

Čaputová (PS-Spolu) - 54.6% > 83.9% in the 2nd round
Bugár (Most-Híd) - 25.3%
Harabin (national conservative) - 5.9%
Šefčovič (Smer) - 5.4% > 16.1% in the 2nd round
Kotleba (ĽSNS) - 2.7%

Hungarian areas are generally very rural and poor, so it might seem strange they'd vote for a party of urban liberals, but they vote that way for same reasons as even the most conservative black people in the US vote for the Dems. They might agree with Fico or even Kotleba, but they won't touch them with a ten-foot pole.

There isn't a lot of hatred towards Hungarians - even at the nadir of Hungarian-Slovak relations in 2009, when Slovakia banned the Hungarian president from entering the country, most people saw it only as politicians bickering among each other. There has, however, been the notorious case of hate crime against Hedviga Malinová.

(Also, thanks for all the recommendations guys! I'm glad that you people not just read, but like my stuff! )

^{[1] Today's Jobbik is arguably more moderate than Fidesz, now that the outright Nazis left the party.}

[Estrella]

The Story of Slovak Politics
1998-2010: Eye of the Tiger

Dzurinda's first term got off to a very rocky start. Finance Minister Brigita Schmögnerová from the now Blairified SDĽ set out to completely reshape Slovakia's economy. The measures were painful - economic growth was middling, unemployment increased further to almost 20%, further scandals with tunneling of recently privatised companies emerged and there was a general feeling of being let down among voters who had high expectations of the first post-Mečiar government. Not to mention that the ideologically disparate coalition of everyone-who-hates-HZDS was seemingly spending more time with bickering than actually getting things done.

In an attempt to unify the coalition, Dzudinda set out to create the Slovak Democratic and Christian Union - SDKÚ, a movement uniting all liberals, conservatives and Christian democrats. It didn't go as planned, but still, most of 1998's SDK joined the new party and gave them a solid base to estabilish themselves as the party of Bratislava's upstart middle class.

In the meantime, opposition was having trouble of their own. Slota left SNS after some ego clashes and formed his own party, PSNS - Real Slovak National Party. Neither SNS nor PSNS would reach the threshold in the next election and they'd reunite afterwards. Mečiar was in deep sh*t as well - he was haunted by the Elektra case ^[1] and his voters were being poached by new kids on the block and what was to become the closest Slovakia has to a natural governing party - Smer, created by ex-HZDS Ivan Mjartan and ex-SDĽ Robert Fico. Their campaign consisted of - besides butts ^[2] - casting them as a way to break the iron grip of two evils, Mečiar and Dzurinda, on Slovakia's politics.

Elections 2002 | Turnout 70.1%
HZDS 19.5%
SDKÚ 15.1%
Smer 13.5%
SMK 11.2%
KDH 8.3%
ANO 8.0% (Alliance of the New Citizen - "liberals", in reality a personal vehicle of TV Markíza owner Pavol Rusko ^[3])
KSS 6.8% (Leonid Brezhneyebrows nostalgics)
PSNS 3.7% 
SNS 3.3%
Others 14.4%

Dzurinda remained the PM, leading a coalition of SDKÚ, SMK, KDH and ANO. The finance portfolio in the new cabinet went to SDKÚ's Ivan Mikloš. Skies were beginning to clear already by the end of Schmögnerová's term, but Mikloš's policies, together with an influx of foreign investments kickstarted the period of  Tatra Tiger, with economic growth of at least 4% every year from 2002 to 2008, peaking at 10.8% in 2007. GDP per capita increased from 50% of EU average in 2000  to 73% in 2008. Furthermore, on May 1, 2004, Slovakia became a member of the EU along with nine other countries, after entering NATO just weeks before on March 29.

Brigita Schmögnerová, Ivan Mikloš, Robert Fico and Ján Slota

If the economy was rosy for Dzurinda, the Parliament wasn't. In 2005, he lost his majority (which was very narrow to begin with) when several MPs left SDKÚ and ANO. He led an unstable minority government until an elections three months early in 2006. Officially, the reason for bringing the election forward was KDH leaving the coalition due to their refusal to accept separation of church and state. There are some rumours that this was actually a manufactured controversy to cut short opposition's opportunity to campaign.

Elections 2006 | Turnout 54.7%
Smer 29.1%
SDKÚ 18.4%
SNS 11.7%
SMK 11.7%
HZDS 8.8%
KDH 8.3%
Others 12.0%

If those rumours were true, then this ended up just like Robert Muldoon's "if I don't have enough time to prepare for an election, neither do my opponents." Smer won with a convincing lead and Robert Fico formed his first government with SNS and - in a 180° turn from what he was saying just weeks before the vote - HZDS.

If the economy was doing so spectacularly, why did Dzurinda lose? Part of it was a general feeling that in their quest for economic growth, his cabinet began hacking away at Slovakia's welfare state with unpopular measures like copays for doctor visits. The other factor was that people were simply tired of him and his scandals - remember, ideology is not dead in Slovak politics, but it's the personalities that matter the most.

The Fico-Slota-Mečiar coalition seemed like a government from hell for many. The relatively moderate Fico managed to keep a bit of a rein on the latter two, but still, this cabinet pursued an extremely hawkish and provocative course, especially in relations with Hungary (Slota once compared Hungarian foreign minister to Adolf Hitler and said "maybe she's even growing that moustache"...). This came at a cost - Smer was suspended from the PES, for example, but at the end of the day, most of it was just rhetoric, and the soaring economy combined with increased social spending kept everyone satisfied - for a while. As the 2010 election was approaching, clouds were appearing on the horizon...


As always, feel free to ask questions!

^{[1] Elektra is a fancy villa that Mečiar acquired under some extremely dubious circumstances. He wasn't amused when journalists started asking him about it, and the whole thing ended with SWAT raiding his home when he refused to come in for police questioning.
[2] A famous Smer poster (maybe mildly NSFW) said "Into the EU! But not with bare asses..." (ie. not dirt poor). Talking about weird election posters, there's also this Magritte-inspired one for ZRS from 1994, and this charming one for SNS ("So that we don't feed those who don't want to work")
[3] Later taken over by the über-rich fashion designer Nora Mojsejová, who turned it into "Nora Mojsejová Party" - closest comparision would be something like "Kim Kardashian Party"}

[Estrella]

Yesterday I've seen Skutok sa stal, a really good documentary about the Remiáš murder, and that inspired me to finally finish this thing, as uninterested as I am in Slovakia's politics at the moment (we ain't got nothing on you, Israel)

The Story of Slovak Politics
2010-2019: Sorry, We've Run Out of Coca-Cola

Elections 2010 | Turnout 58.8%
Smer 34.8% (+5.7)   62 seats
SDKÚ 15.4% (-3.0)   28 seats
SaS 12.1% (new)   22 seats
KDH 8.5% (+0.2)   15 seats
Most-Híd 8.1% (new)   14 seats
SNS 5.1% (-6.6)   9 seats
SMK 4.3% (-7.4)
HZDS 4.3% (-4.5)
Others 7.4%

At the time of 2010's elections, the Great Recession was ravaging Europe, and Slovakia was no exception. With unemployment approaching 15% and a yawning deficit, the government was not popular. Yet, Smer managed to increase its vote, buoyed by its populist anti-Hungarian rhetoric and Slovakia's succesful entry into Eurozone in 2009. Conservative SDKÚ, the main opposition party, fell to only 15%, but with KDH remaining stable and massive gains for the libertarian SaS and liberal Most-Híd, these four parties managed to beat the Smer-SNS-HZDS nationalist bloc and form a government with 79 seats - a majority of eight. SDKÚ leader Iveta Radičová became the first woman to serve as Prime Minister of Slovakia.

The initial euphoria was quickly replaced by a dark reality. Deep cuts and steep tax rises were passed by finance minister Ivan Mikloš, the now increasingly unpopular architect of the "Slovak Tiger" ^[1]. Furthermore, the pro-EU coalition majority began clashing with the Euroskeptic SaS. After the departure of several MPs from SaS caucus to form OĽANO, Radičová's was stuck in a permanent crisis management mode - vicious fights at cabinet meetings, rebel backbenchers holding the government hostage and, on 11 October 2011, the final blow: the vote on European Financial Stability Mechanism that Radičová declared a vote of confidence. The SaS voted against, principled but suicidal, the government fell and an early election was called for spring 2012.

Already beset by failure of what Fico derisively called a zlepenec (glued-together-thing) and stubbornly high unemployment, the centre-right was definitively buried that December by the Gorila scandal - transcripts of wiretaps of Ján Rejda (police chief in charge of investigating corruption), Jirko Malchárek (Dzurinda-era Minister of Economy) and some other people talking about fradulent privatisations, corruption, embezzlement of public property and loads of other financial crimes that implicated people from every major party, but especially SDKÚ.

Elections 2012 | Turnout 59.1%
Smer 44.4% (+9.6%)   83 seats
KDH 8.8% (+0.3)   16 seats
OĽANO 8.6% (new)   16 seats
Most-Híd 6.9% (-1.2)   13 seats
SDKÚ 6.1% (-9.3)   11 seats
SaS 5.9% (-6.2)   11 seats
SNS 4.6% (-0.5)
SMK 4.3% (+4.3)
99% 1.6% (new; a Occupy Movement-inspired party, best known for having a lot of fradulent nomination signatures)
Others 10.4%

With seemingly everything going in its favor, Smer won in a crushing landslide. Their 83 seats marked the first time in Slovak history that one party won an absolute majority, and were in fact only 7 seats short from being able to unilaterally change the constituion. 

Smer certainly don't celebrate like champagne socialists ^{(and yes, this is where I got the title from, Fico and Cola is kind of a meme here)}

(To be continued)


^{[1] Interestingly, after the fall of Radičová, Mikloš was rumored to become the finance minister of Ukraine, and later served as Volodymyr Groysman's financial advisor.}

[Estrella]

After such a historic victory, Smer's time in government was expected to be smooth sailing, and it generally was - no need to clean the mess of insane coalition partners, no one to share the spoils of power with, a recovering economy, dramatically lower unemployment, big victories in local and regional elections and, in 2015, a refugee crisis that gave new targets to what Fico was most skilled in: populism.

Still, there were some bumps in the road: while some policies were succesful and popular (free train tickets for students and retirees, a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage passed with KDH support and various "social packages" and welfare measures), some were not: notably Fico's attempt to effectively create a single-payer healthcare system, which failed due to opposition from insurance companies, and then a proposal to ban private healthcare insurers from making a profit, which was dragged all the way to European courts before being abandoned. There was also something that dragged down every single Slovak cabinet - you guessed it, corruption scandals.

Elections 2016 | Turnout: 59.8%
Smer 28.3% (-16.1)   49 seats
SaS 12.1% (+6.2)   21 seats
OĽANO 11.0% (+2.4)   19 seats
SNS 8.6% (+4.3)   15 seats
ĽSNS 8.0% (+6.4)   14 seats
Sme Rodina 6.6% (new)   11 seats
Most-Híd 6.5% (-0.4)   11 seats
#Sieť 5.6% (new)   10 seats
KDH 4.9% (-3.9%)
SMK 4.0% (-0.3)
Others 4.4%

It's the economy and immigrants, stupid, Smer might have thought going into the election, but their laundry list of scandals, especially rigged public tenders, bit hard. Nevertheless, there was no alternative to Fico, other than an even more dysfunctional version of Radičová's zlepenec, and Fico formed his third cabinet with his old pals the SNS, and two parties that were his (and SNS') sworn enemies just weeks before - Most-Híd and #Sieť.

The cabinet was clearly seen as, at best, a neccesary evil from the start, and went through several crises - such as Danko inexplicably threatening to leave in summer 2017, before just as inexplicably backing down - but it managed to trudge on, until Monday, 26 February 2018.

On that morning, police were called to a house in Veľká Mača (just a stone's throw from where I live btw). Its inhabitants, a 27 years old investigative journalist with a focus on corruption Ján Kuciak and his spouse Martina Kušnírová, hadn't been answering phone calls several days. Their bodies were found lying on the ground, shot, dead for five days.

A firestorm of outrage ensued. Fico offered a €1 million bounty for information leading to solving the crime, in a slightly surreal press conference with literal bundles of bankotes. Nevertheless, many people suspected that Smer or Smer-associated mafia (including the entrepreneur Marián Kočner that I've already mentioned and will talk about again) had a motive to kill Kuciak to prevent him releasing the skeletons in their closets. Fico himself has always harbored an intense hatred towards journalists, going as far as calling them "dirty anti-Slovak prostitutes" in 2016.

A protest movement emerged, called Za slušné Slovensko (For a decent/moral Slovakia) that quickly gathered steam. On March 2, some 25 thousand protesters gathered in Bratislava, the largest demonstration since 1989's Velvet Revolution. On March 9, 60,000 people protested and called for Fico's resignation. Heads began to roll - first the Minister of Culture (hence responsible for journalism) Marek Maďarič on February 28 and Minister of Interior and deputy PM Róbert Kaliňák on March 12. Ten days later, after threats from Most and SNS to collapse the government, the unthinkable happened - Robert Fico himself resigned, replaced by the relatively unknown Peter Pellegrini, but stayed on as party leader. Still, the protests would not stop - after Fico's departure, there was a 65,000-strong rally in Bratislava calling for early elections. Elder statesman František Mikloško gave a speech referencing the 1989 overthrow of Communism and saying "children must finish what their parents started." Nevertheless, Smer's coalition partner had no intention of going to the country and the protest movement disspated over the following days and weeks.

Investigation of the murder wasn't out of the news for a single day for the next year (literally, I'm pretty sure). It was a horribly complicated mess that is unfinished even today, but eventually three main suspects emerged: 'Ndrangheta, an Italian (Calabrian) mafia syndicate that Kuciak was writing an article about at the time of his murder; Antonino Vadalà, a Calabrian-born bussinessman and cocaine smuggler with ties to Fico's personal assistant who was also being investigated by Kuciak; and Norbert Bödör, the son of the owner of Bonul, a private security company close to Smer (and I mean very close - they provide security for many state institutions, courtesy of contracts signed by Smer ministers, and Fico was a regular guest at their anniversary parties).

Anyway, Pellegrini's term was rather dull so far, besides the occasional scandalette here and there (such as pro-Russian SNS deputy ministers trying to block buying new American F-16s for Slovak Air Force).

By the way, Pellegrini's surname is not a coincidence - his great-grandfather was a Sicilian railway engineer that settled in Austria-Hungary.


I know this is just editorialising, but IMO this cartoon sums up Fico, Smer and their kind of politics and populism perfectly:

Fico, standing in front of a group of Roma living in a ghetto: "Social democracy fights against poverty. You are the poverty."

[Estrella]

Apparently Pellegrini govt both lost majority in parliament and still survives motion of no confidence.

Yes, after two MPs quit Most-Híd, bringing the number of independents to 24 (¹/₆ of the parliament!), the government now is, theoretically, in a minority of 2 (74 vs. 76 for the opposition). That doesn't mean much though, because 1) many of those independents will support the government anyway, or at least abstain 2) confidence votes - especially those called by OĽANO and Matovič - happen all the time, and never succeed.

Now, the reason for this vote was Smer's refusal to sack Monika Jankovská, a junior minister at the Ministry of Justice. She resigned anyway (and that was two weeks ago), so why is that such a problem? In mid-August, NAKA (National Criminal Agency) conducted a series of raids on homes of various high-ranking judges, including Jankovská. Her phone was confiscated and it was discovered that she communicated with the, er, "controversial entrepeneur" Marián Kočner.

I've mentioned Kočner several times in this thread. In mid-90s, he got involved in the Technopol scandal (the one that led to kidnapping of the son of Michal Kováč), and allegedly convinced Oskar Fegyveres to come clean to get Technopol out of the news. In 1998, he unsuccesfuly tried to take over TV Markíza from Pavol Rusko (the Gamatex scandal; in case you have no idea what I'm talking about, read the 1990-1998 post). Around 2005, Kočner appeared in the so-called "mafia lists" of people involved in various illegal activities, but this wasn't enough for prosecution. Later, Kočner got rather close with Robert Fico, and for some time they even were literally next-door neighbours in the Bonaparte luxury housing estate. There's even some speculation that Kočner bugged Fico's appartment.

This year, just when everyone thought that the 90's "Wild West" era of mafia was forgotten, several bombshells came: Pavol Rusko was, together with several mafia bosses, convicted of the murder of his business partner. Soon after, prosecution resumed in the Gamatex scandal (which, at its core, was about falsification of €70 million worth of promissory notes, quite a big thing) and on September 8, the trial of Kočner began.

However, Kočner's trouble doesn't end there. He had some connections to the murdered journalist Ján Kuciak, and repeatedly threatened to dig out dirt on him after he became the target of his articles. This Kočner-Fico-Kuciak triangle, as clouded as it is, is the focus of recent investigations, and it's why anyone having contacts with Kočner is immediately suspect.

Kočner being escorted to court.

Anyway, politics in Slovakia isn't just organized crime by other means. You can even stumble upon some things that Kočner isn't involved in, like the ex-Smer minister Tomáš Drucker and his newly founded party, Dobrá voľba/Good Choice. Drucker used to be the Health Minister, and Dobrá voľba will apparently focus on healthcare and pensions. It's way too early to see what becomes of it - maybe Smer without all the baggage? Drucker does seem less inclined to Trumpism than Fico. They're doing quite well so far:

[Estrella]

Wait, how on Earth is Kotleba-L'SNS in third? Granted, it's "only" 10% but that is still a ton of support for a literal neo-nazi party!

It's the same story as with any other far-right party, really. Isolated rural/rust belt areas in a dead end economic situation that everyone is leaving in droves. Plus the problem of Roma ghettos, the (admittedly justified) grumbling they bring, which tends to quickly turn into 1960s Alabama level racism, even among the more 'educated'. Plus, during WW2, Slovakia wasn't occupied by Germany in return for installing a collaborationist regime that many people view positively even today.

What's more troubling is that ĽSNS are more popular among young people. Why, I have no idea. Frustration and edginess?

[Estrella]

Wait, how on Earth is Kotleba-L'SNS in third? Granted, it's "only" 10% but that is still a ton of support for a literal neo-nazi party!

It's the same story as with any other far-right party, really. Isolated rural/rust belt areas in a dead end economic situation that everyone is leaving in droves. Plus the problem of Roma ghettos, the (admittedly justified) grumbling they bring, which tends to quickly turn into 1960s Alabama level racism, even among the more 'educated'. Plus, during WW2, Slovakia wasn't occupied by Germany in return for installing a collaborationist regime that many people view positively even today.

What's more troubling is that ĽSNS are more popular among young people. Why, I have no idea. Frustration and edginess?

Does Slovakia have a brain drain problem with young people leaving for other EU countries? Poland, of course, has the same problem, and one theory is thst young people in Poland (those who stsy) are so right wing because they feel left behind by their more successful, adventurous peers who leave. There is a kind of ressentiment that grows into a xenophobic insularity.

I haven't thought about it, but it might be one of the causes. Slovakia does have a big brain drain problem, and what makes it even worse is Czech Republic - much better opportunities for study, work and business, and you don't even have to learn a new language if you want to move there. Apparently, there are some 110,000 Slovaks living in Czechia - including the PM, former mayor of Prague and loads of entrepreneurs. 24 thousand of those are university students, and last year 44 thousand students graduated high school in Slovakia, so that makes a huge proportion of the "educated" class leaving, and that's without taking other EU countries in account.

[Estrella]

Some interesting things that happened in the past couple of days:

While Fico is staying on as Smer's leader, Pellegrini will be the party's candidate for PM and No. 1 on the list in next year's election. Fico has probably finally realized how much of a liability he is to Smer, but he still wants to keep as much backroom power as possible.

Last Sunday, Pochod za život (March for Life), a 50 thousand strong pro-life protest took place in Bratislava, with the stated aim to push through "any measures that will limit abortion" up to a complete ban, with no exceptions even in the case of danger to the mother (!) Kotleba's ĽSNS took part in the march as well and everybody was acting surprised <rant> despite the fact that the Catholic Church in Slovakia are basically Francoists that still openly miss good ol' times </rant>

Miroslav Beblavý, the leader (well, leader-ish, it's complicated) of PS-Spolu, has refused the offer from Dobrá Voľba to join them in a coalition for 2020 elections, apparently not liking DV leader Drucker's origins in Smer and some of his policies (he's somewhat left-leaning economically, as opposed to the FDP/D66-ness policies of PS-Spolu).

Talking about the policies of PS-Spolu, they've released their platform last week. It consist mostly of vague, feel-good liberal platitudes - better and more modern education, protecting human rights, fighting against disinformation, making the country more open to business etc.

As much as polling in Slovakia sucks, here's another poll:
Smer 22%
PS-Spolu 13%
Kotleba-ĽSNS 11%
Sme rodina 7%
KDH 7%
SNS 7%
OĽANO 7%
Za ľudí 7%
SaS 6%
Most-Híd 4%
SMK 3%
Dobrá voľba 2%


Oh, and again thank you for the recommendations guys!

[Estrella]

What is the nature of anti-Hungarian sentiment in Slovakia? Obviously it's irrational hatred based on absolutely nothing blah blah blah but what is the average bigoted Slovakians stereotype of Hungarians? Are they crime prone welfare queens or are they clannish unscrupulous businessmen?

Neither of those, really (well, maybe a bit of the latter, as mafia in Slovakia is dominated by Hungarians, but it doesn't have much impact IMO). It's about seeing them as a fifth column due to Hungary's constant provocations about REEEE TRIANON and "getting back the stolen lands" - despite the fact that Hungarians in Slovakia have no interest in that and an unsuccesful attempt at the creation of a Hungarian-majority region (without any special rights, even) was the closest thing to separatism they supported.

Having said that, today nationalists both in Slovakia and Hungary have moved on to immigrants and there's very little actual hatred towards Hungarians today. I have a Slovak mother and Hungarian father, I live in an ethnically pretty much 50/50 town and I genuinely haven't seen any prejudice except on TV. Now, the Roma are a different matter...

So SMER has 22% and the extreme right (LSNS, SR and SNS) 25%! Tragic.

What kind off party is ZL?! And is it RE or EPP or really neither?!

We still don't know much more than what I said about them earlier:

Za ľudí | For the People | Leader: none yet | EP group: none
Founded in June of this year by ex-President Andrej Kiska. Supposedly some kind of technocratic (they call themselves "a party of experts and personalities from regions") inoffensive kinda-conservative-kinda-centrist-liberal-but-not-too-much-that-would-be-scary thing. Mind you, the party hasn't even had it's first congress yet, and only thing we know so far are meaningless platitudes (bEttEr hEaLThcArE! beTtER eDUcAtIOn!). A good example of Kiska's moderate heroism: his stance on same-sex partnerships ("we all know those people, we know they aren't worse than others, they have to deal with prejudice [...] but we can solve access to medical records without registered partnerships that would create a precedent for same-sex marriage")

They haven't announced what European party they'll join yet, but I'm guessing that it's going to be EPP. It's still too early to tell, but they seem to want to be a party for people who 1) hate Smer, nationalists and Nazis and 2) think the current conservative opposition is incompetent and 3) think PS-Spolu are a bunch of gay feminazi Muslim hipsters.

About calling the current political situation tragic: in some ways it certainly is (both with Kotleba and the increasingly Russophilic and anti-democratic nationalists), but in others it's better than ever: [editorial] we finally have a party that wants something else for this country than Communist nostalgia, strongman populism or neoliberal Catholicism, while also being responsible, pro-European and socially progressive. [/editorial]

[Estrella]

Did you really think more than a few weeks could pass without a new party being founded?

Štefan Harabin, former Minister of Justice, Chief Justice of Slovakia's Supreme Court and a presidential candidate earlier this year (14.4%, third place) confirmed the rumours and announced the founding of a new party, Vlasť (Homeland). Harabin, much like the (politically) late Ján Slota and many other Slovak politicians, is mostly known as being a corrupt egomaniacal moron - accusing people of plotting an assasination attempt against him, the weapon being a falling lampshade, fighting against "jenjer ideology", throwing libel suits left and right, being good pals with Albanian narcos, speaking like a brain dead snail with chronic laryngitis - yet, just like Slota or Kollár, he seems to have a small but solid group of supporters. The press conference announcing the launch of the party was, much like Štefan himself, a total disaster - a fight almost broke out after a bystander attacked one of the journalists, then, after a 12 minute monologue, Harabin asked if the conference was being streamed live on TV, and when the answer was no, he stood up and left. [/rant]

Vlasť, besides being Harabin's personal vehicle, is a socially conservative, Euroskeptic and nationalist party. In the presidential election, Harabin rallied against immigration, Islamization and for protecting "Christian values".
The national(ist) conservative field is going to be very crowded in the next election, so he probably won't get more than 10%, but IMO he has a good chance of making it past the threshold on the back of his name recognition, if nothing else.

[Estrella]

A summary of the past 48 hours:

If you scroll a couple of posts above, you can read about the Gorila case - release of transcripts of conversations about all kinds of shady financial dealings that put the final nail in the coffin of Iveta Radičová's 2010-2012 government. After that, Gorila was generally thought to be dead - until yesterday, when editors' offices of major Slovak media received an anonymous email with a link to the full Gorila tapes.

The main villain in this story is Jaroslav Haščák - entrepreneur, financier and the main partner in Penta Investments Group, a conglomerate that owns, among other things, several privatized public hospitals and a health insurance company. They are widely disliked for their extremely close relationship to Smer in general and Fico in particular. The whole affair is a horribly complicated clusterfck, but the gist of the tapes is that Haščák tried to influence various politicians, including Robert Fico, to push policies favorable to Penta & friends, in exchange for donations to their parties.

This has unleashed a wave of Gorilamania from Slovak media (there's even a Spotify playlist of all the songs playing in the backgroung) and, more seriously, the first political fallout: OĽANO leader Igor Matovič invaded Smer's press conference with a Gorila quote from Fico about financing of Smer's electoral campaigns which, if true, could be used to indict him.

Gorila already killed one PM and she's getting ready for another one.

_{(Also, woohoo, second page! )}

[Estrella]

Coca Cola decided to use the affair for marketing purposes and they decided to post graphic with inscription which says "Finally you will hear that" obviously referring to the Fico recordings as there were also monkey emoji. Fico for year were stating that he has nothing in common with that affair and now we have proof that he had.

I'm getting reeeally off topic here, but it's connected to this:

Smer certainly don't celebrate like champagne socialists (and yes, this is where I got the title from, Fico and Cola is kind of a meme here)

which was revived by the fact that the recordings include a conversation where Fico asks Haščák for some Coke, but not diet, because he hates the taste. The ads are really writing themselves

And if you had any doubts about us living in a Monty Python sketch, it's worth nothing that the Matovič press conference invasion almost turned into a fistfight:

[Estrella]

Unsurprisingly, the Awakening of the Gorila (I'm gonna trademark this) has unleashed yet another wave of anti-Fico protests in the big cities. Encouragingly, they seem to be led by young people. Larger protests can be expected over the weekend, perhaps in the tens of thousands.

Keeping Up with the Partyshians episode 547712

Eduard Chmelár, a former member of Slovakia's irrelevant Green Party and a presidential candidate earlier this year (2.8%) decided to found his own political party, Socialisti.sk. He's rather vague on any kind of policies, but he's known to be generally hard left and green, quite populist, Euroskeptic ("EU is a band of losers") and unclear on social issues - I guess you could compare him to Jean-Luc Mélénchon. IMO Slovakia needed this kind of political option (even though there's no way I'd vote for him), but Slovak hard/far-left has tended to be conspirationist Chavista crackpots (eg. Ľuboš Blaha), and he might turn out to be the same thing.

Now, a brand new poll:

Smer-SD        20.1%
PS-Spolu        12.7%
Kotleba-ĽSNS 12.3%
Za ľudí           12.0%
SaS                 6.7%
SNS                 6.4%
Sme rodina      5.9%
OĽANO            5.8%
KDH                5.6%
------------------------
Most-Híd          3.9%
SMK                 3.1%
Dobrá voľba      1.7%
Socialisti.sk      1.3%
Vlasť                1.3%

(Nine parties in parliament, those would be some interesting coalition talks...)


In the politics-as-Wild-West news, we're at last inching closer to a resolution of the murder of journalist Ján Kuciak. The perpetrator has already been convicted earlier this year, and today Marián Kočner's fixer reached an agreement with the prosecutor about a lower sentence in exchange for, most likely, information needed to convict Kočner for having ordered the murder to silence Kuciak's investigation into his financial frauds. More than that, it turns out that the murder was a kind of a last-ditch solution after Kočner's people failed to find any kompromat on Kuciak, and Kočner was plotting an escape from jail with the help of mafia.

An interesting sidenote - the effort to find something on Kuciak was led by Peter Tóth, a liberal anti-Mečiar journalist in the 1990s who was close to the "parallel secret service" - a group of ex-intelligence officers working to undermine Mečiar's misuse of Slovak intelligence services for political purposes. Understandably then, he had the experience and contacts to go after someone like that, but I'm still surprised that he did it. Money talks, I guess.

(For those just tuning in - Marián Kočner is a businessman very close - financially, politically and personally - to Smer and Robert Fico)


If you have any questions or are curious about something, ask away, guys!

[Estrella]

Presented without comment because seriously guys

Bratislava, October 28 (TASR) – The ban on publishing relevant public opinion polls before elections in Slovakia has been extended from 14 days to 50 days, Parliament decided on Monday.

The provision will also concern the general election due in four months.

Several parliamentary parties complained about significant differences in results of public opinion polls, even those released in short succession.

“We believe that this law won’t restrict voters’ right to access to information, as it’s in fact been designed to protect voters from disinformation and purpose-built information,” reads a report accompanying the bill.

https://newsnow.tasr.sk/policy/14376/

Good news is that this will likely end up at the Constitutional Court, but still...

[Estrella]

So, Robert Fico seems to be in hot water - and surprisingly not because of his corruption (yet).

First things first, we have to go back to 2016, when Milan Mazurek, an MP for the neo-Nazi ĽSNS took part in a radio debate, where, among other things, he said:

...€150 million is going to be spent on houses for Gypsy communities, that is for people who have never done anything for our nation and our state, decided to live an asocial way of life and suck out our welfare system. We, who live a decent life and work, are snubbed by the state, while those asocials are given everything for free.

After failing to dissociate themselves from the comments, the radio station was fined €15,000 and Mazurek himself was indicted for a hate crime, which resulted in a string of trials and appeals that ended this September, when the Supreme Court ordered Mazurek to pay a €10,000 fine and kicked him out of Parliament.

Fico reacted to the verdict on Facebook thusly:

Milan Mazurek said what almost all of the nation thinks. If you execute someone for speaking the truth, you'll turn them into a national hero [...] Should the Supreme Court verdict be a precedent for what is a crime when talking about Roma, law enforcement could raid any pub in Slovakia and lock up every patron, including the dogs on the floor.

And just today, National Criminal Agency indicted Fico on the counts of defamation of a nation, race or belief, encouragement of racial or ethnic hatred and agreeing with a crime.

Conversely, the PM Peter Pellegrini has condemned Fico and stated that the verdict is "a serious warning not to spread hate", and even the fricking SNS (a party whose previous leader said that "for the Gypsies, we need a big whip and a small yard") said they're "surprised and shocked" and that "any support for extremism is dangerous for the society."

I definitely didn't expect our justice system to show this much teeth dealing with hate, but still, good job!

[Estrella]

An indictment a day keeps the bribes away

NAKA (the National Criminal Agency) is fast becoming the four-letter word most feared by Slovak politicians, as a former president (2014-2019) and Za Ľudí leader Andrej Kiska was indicted of creative accounting with his 2014 campaign money that resulted in the government being skirted of €155k in taxes.

As for the trial of entrepreneur-cum-thug Marián Kočner, Vladimír Sklenka, a district judge in Bratislava, was forced to resign after news broke that he and Kočner exchanged over 8000 text messages and tried to rig the case selection system so that Sklenka will end up judging Kočner's case. Sklenka also used to be a bodyguard and personal assistant to (notoriously corrupt) Štefan Harabin, so it won't be a huge surprise if it turns out that there are some connections there.

Oh, and let's not forget that Smer has a new logo. They're literally calling themselves New Labour New Smer

In the non-political news, a gas explosion in a block of flats in Prešov has resulted in 5 deaths (so far) and 40 injured

[Estrella]

So, a couple of days ago, Smer released this ad, starring Robert F (despite appearances, he's still the party's líder máximo) as a teacher scolding unruly and lying children playing the leaders of opposition parties:

https://youtu.be/owDQLb-TpCM

Now, take a look at this Likud ad from 2015:

https://youtu.be/YRWFVE2RRq4

If you think that the two ads are pretty similar, you're not the only one, because Shaviv Strategy and Campaigns, the producers of the Bibi ad, are apparently considering suing Smer for copyright infringement

[Estrella]

The official date of the election is set for Saturday, February 29, 2020, in just over two months. Despite that, there is hardly any campaigning at all except a few billboards - presumably everyone is waiting for Christmas to blow over and people to start paying attention.

(Out of curiosity, I checked when was the last time a country held elections on a leap day: there was the first round of legislatives in France in 1852, and the state election in Hamburg in 2004)

A new poll has been released. Margins of error on polls here are usually quite big, and there tend to be wild swings from one poll to another, but look at this: seven parties within ±2% of the threshold!


I'm afraid there isn't any voting compass or anything to guide those who are interested to which party is the best fit for you (much less one in English), but feel free to take this horrible flowchart I made, featuring all 25 parties standing. Right click for an actually readable version.

[Estrella]

With less than six weeks left,  the election campaign is ... well, not heating up at all. Quite understandable when you consider that with such a wildly unstable party system, there's no such thing as a 'base' that could raise money for ads.

Something else is happening, though: the saga of the Kuciak murder is kinda sorta getting ahead. The people who actually carried out the murder have been caught long ago, the focus now is on the tangled web of connections behind the conspiracy. The trial has been going on for a week now, and this is what we know (with a short recap for those just tuning in):
- The Smer-connected mafioso-in-chief Marián Kočner has definitely ordered the killing of Kuciak
- Slovakia's second richest man and Kočner's associate Jaroslav Haščák (again close to the Party That Shall Not Be Named) testified against Kočner and so did the ex-secret agent Peter Tóth
- Kočner's personal friend and son of the owner of a big private security company, Norbert Bödör (also connected to a certain political party, no you don't get a point for guessing it's Smer) denied everything.

You know that there are those crazy conspiracy theorists rambling about how all the high-ranking white-collar criminals, pedophiles etc. are connected by the Illuminati or whatever? Hilariously enough, that seems to be somewhat...well, not quite so crazy right now. A couple of years ago, Čistý deň, a drug addiction centre (funnily enough located in my hometown) was embroiled in a teen sexual abuse scandal. And just yesterday, it was discovered that Zuzana Tománková, the centre's director, went to a holiday in Croatia with (drum roll) ... Peter Tóth and Marián Kočner. She informed them about the "situation" in Čistý deň and Kočner, in turn, ranted about how he "just needs to get rid of one journalist and there'll be peace." Anyway, the way things are going now, I won't be surprised if we'll be making memes about how Jeffrey Kočner didn't kill himself in a couple of weeks :/

(Fun fact: for the past couple of months, we've been getting many of this information from Kočner's encrypted text messages, which means that even an 80 years old grandma who doesn't know how to switch on a computer has heard about Threema)

And let's not forget today's special - two top cats in legal trouble for the price of one! Dobroslav Trnka, the former prosecutor-general (2004-2011) is being prosecuted for embezzling money from Tipos, the state lottery monopoly.

(Another fun fact: when Trnka left office in 2011, the Parliament elected his successor, whom the President refused to appoint, resulting in a Slovakia not having a prosecutor-general for the next 28 months.)

[Estrella]

Oh, and there's also a new poll:

Smer 17%
ĽSNS 11%
PS-Spolu 10%
Za ľudí 10%
OĽaNO 8%
Sme rodina 8%
SaS 7%
SNS 6%
KDH 5%
Most-Híd 4%
Dobrá voľba 3%
MKS 3%
Vlasť 2%

= Liberal-conservatives (PS-S, ZĽ, OĽaNO, SaS, KDH, DV) 43%
= Far-right (ĽSNS, SR, SNS, Vlasť) 27%
= Smer 20%
= Hungarians (Most, MKS) 7%

For the lolz: In case you're worried about Kočner being bored in jail, don't be: he can make use of his masterful cooking skills (when it comes to omelettes, at least), as shown by a teen version of him on a 1982 edition of Young Pioneer's Swallow on the hilariously stilted Czechoslovak state TV.