Slovak Elections and Politics | Fico the Fourth 🇸🇰

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Is there any reason for OL'anos upward trend in the recent polls? They appear to have a good chance for second place (in a bit better position that Kotleba) and only trail Smer by 4-5 points in the last polls before the polling ban.

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Peter Pellegrini confirmed today he would leave Smer and found and own party.

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OĽaNO is crashing in the polls (show me a country where the PM's party polls 15%...) and if Matovič mishandles his government's possible collapse (almost guaranteed), they could go even lower.

Slovakia in 2011/12.

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One thing I should note is that while both ĽSNS and OĽaNO have some sort of base that will most likely stick with them, in a recent post I mentioned that ĽSNS was near the 5% threshold. That was because in a poll I looked at, they were at around 5%, and they're five points higher now. Polls in Slovakia are notoriously terrible (still worth looking at them for the trends) and when the election comes, a five-point or bigger polling error is something that absolutely can and did happen. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's certainly possible that it could also happen in a downwards direction and it could happen to, say, OĽaNO.

Hm.

Radoslav Procházka, is that you?

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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.

Didn't all 11 members of SDKÚ-DS leave their party eventually post 2012, and same with #siet following the 2016 elections?
I thought the self-destruction of the Austrian BZÖ was something, but Slovakia tops its Southwestern neighbor once again.

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Might be a random and dumb question, but considering that the Hungarian minority has no "formal" representation in Parliament - Generally speaking, is there any chance that the electoral law could be amended or so?

In Germany, Poland and Denmark, minority parties (for Sorbians and Danish in Germany, Germans in Poland and Germans in Denmark), are excepted from the 5 % threshold. In Croatia and Slovenia, minority representatives have a fixed number of MPs and in Hungary, there is an extra "parallel election" for minority representatives without a threshold (although the minority parties would still need to take the "natural" threshold).

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So, if German media reported correctly, Matovič offered his resignation, but under the condition that he continues to serve as leader of OL'ano, a bit similar to the Fico/Pellegrini situation. But the other parties refused that deal as this would allow him to "govern from the backseat", stating that he still hasn't understood that he himself is the problem.

I love Slovak politics.

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Anti-imperialists in Slovakia protest proposal for defense agreement with US

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Earlier this month, the Slovakian defense and foreign affairs ministries held talks on the Agreement on Defense Cooperation with the US, which is likely to be approved by January 2022. The Socialisti (Socilaist movement) has claimed that the defense agreement will compromise Slovakia’s sovereignty over its own territory and security and will drag the country into the imperialist machinations of the US. Earlier, the campaign group United for Peace launched a petition calling for prohibition of temporary or permanent deployment of any foreign troops in Slovakia.  As of December 23, the petition had been endorsed by 20,764 people.

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Artur Bekmatov from Socialisti said that as a consequence of the defense agreement, US would occupy two military airports in Slovakia. US military presence would be long-term and would see the Slovak government awarding special privileges to US soldiers such as suspending criminal authority against US soldiers present within its territory.

In their petition, United for Peace has demanded the Slovak national council to adopt a constitutional law on prohibition of temporary or permanent deployment of any foreign troops on the territory of the Slovak Republic and to enshrine the right to peace in the constitution. It also calls on the president to ratify the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW).

The petition has gotten the signatures of more than 20,000 people.

They can brag they collected more signatures than votes SDKÚ-DS received in the 2016 elections!

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To fight rising energy prices, the government has put in place an excess profits tax on nuclear power generation, which supplies more than half of country's electricity. It's an extra 50% tax on revenue over €42 per megawatt-hour. It's an interesting example of how Sulík has transitioned from a libertarian to a normal centre-right liberal. I'm not a huge fan of him, ideologically or personally, but I feel like he's one of the better finance ministers we've had and would be a much better PM than any available alternative.

Slovenské elektrárne already threatened that this tax might drive the company into bankruptcy and could potentially sink Mochovce 3 & 4 (both reactors are expected to get into operation in the next years), a project into which 6 billion euros had been invested already.