Former Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico's populist social democratic SMER party has won the parliamentary elections in Slovakia, contrary to initial exit polls.. Fico has collected 23.3% of the votes, while its closest rival, whom the exit polls declared the winner, the liberal Progressive Slovakia (PS) party, stagnated at 17%.. In the first exit polls he was leading.
Fico's victory is bad news for the European Union and for Ukraine. In his previous stages as Prime Minister Fico proved to be a pragmatic player on the European and transatlantic stages, without questioning the country's obligations with the EU or NATO.. Russia's large-scale invasion of Ukraine has caused its rethinking. Fico's newfound Russophilia has resonated in a country where many voters were socialized during the Soviet era and whose cybersphere is regularly bombarded by Moscow's sulphurous propaganda.
The third party with the most votes was the moderate social democrat La Voz (Hlas), of former Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, a former ally of Fico, with 14.9%.
The Smer was the dominant political force in the country until 2018, when the murder of an investigative journalist, who had denounced the relations between organized crime and the upper echelons of power, caused a wave of indignation, which ended up forcing Fico's resignation. .
Despite his victory at the polls, it will not be easy for Fico to form a coalition with enough majority to control a Parliament with 150 seats. It will need two partners to form a Government and ensure a stable parliamentary majority, precisely what the country has not had in the last five years..
Thus Slovakia remains on the precipice of ungovernability. After four prime ministers in five years, yesterday's elections do not guarantee the stable legislature that the country needs at a crucial moment for the European Union.
The resulting government will replace the center-right coalition cabinet in power since 2020, which changed three times in three years.
The electoral poster of the presidential candidate and former prime minister Robert Fico. SOUP IMAGES
“If this neo-fascist party becomes part of the next government, we will find ourselves in a situation similar to that of Finland, where a far-right party is a member of the coalition, or of Sweden, with a fascist party supporting the government from the Parliament,” says Slovak analyst Zuzana Kepplová.
Slovakia abandoned the two-party system years ago. And it is expected that this time nine parties will enter Parliament. The polarization in this small country, with only 4.4 million voters, is such that “one of the most important tasks of the future Executive will be reconciliation in society, since harmony and social cohesion transcend the horizon of elections,” declared the Slovak president, Zuzana Caputova, yesterday after casting her vote.
TWO SCENARIOS
Analysts foresee two scenarios and both dangerous. If Fico, as the winner, manages to form a parliamentary majority, Slovakia will experience a process of orbanization, given that Smer has adopted the ideology of the Hungarian Prime Minister, Viktor Orban.. The transformation will not happen overnight and, according to Kepplová, it would face resistance from a vibrant and critical civil society.
There is a second, more hopeful short- and medium-term scenario for liberal democracy and that is if it is the leader of the Progressive Slovakia (PS) party, Michal Simecka, who manages to gather a parliamentary majority.. The question here would be for how long.
Simecka, a former journalist for the Slovak progressive newspaper SME and the British Financial Times, is a politician without scandals but also without experience; Hence, in his first words, Fico, after exercising his right to vote, warned against a Slovakia governed by “amateurs and rioters.”
Slovakia yesterday held early elections with an Executive of technocrats at the head of the country, formed by the President of the Republic, after the center-right coalition of conservative Eduard Heger fell in a motion of no confidence in December.
The ungovernability in this country exceeds that of Bulgaria, since last June in the hands of a technocratic Cabinet after five elections. If this dynamic continues, the alternative to the risk of organization is the vulgarization of governability and politics.