The Slovak populist party Smer-SD, opposed to aid to Ukraine and pro-Russian, won the legislative election in Slovakia, according to the count of almost all the votes.
The vote in the country of 5.4 million, a member of the European Union (EU) and NATO, was seen as key to whether Slovakia can stay on its pro-Western course or turn more towards Russia.
Contrary to the results of two exit polls, the party of former Prime Minister Robert Fico received 23.3% of the vote, ahead of the centrist Progressive Slovakia (PS) party supported by 17.03% of voters, after the counting of 99.43% of the ballots. The final results are expected Sunday morning.
Slovak President Zuzana Caputova told Agence France-Presse this week that she would entrust the formation of the next government to the leader of the winning party, regardless of her “personal preference” as a former member of Progressive Slovakia .
Smer-SD warned that it would not comment on the vote until later on Sunday. Mr. Fico carefully avoided reporters on election day. His party had promised during the election campaign to stop aid to neighboring Ukraine.
A campaign marked by disinformation
During a heated electoral campaign, marked by particularly high rates of online disinformation and which gave rise to several brawls between candidates, Mr. Fico attacked the EU and NATO as well as ‘to the LGBTQ minority. He also opposed any additional military aid to Ukraine as it fights against the Russian invasion.
Mr. Fico voted in a village northeast of Bratislava, accompanied by his mother. “Talking to my mother, I find that she has a lot of experience and common sense, and of course, she makes the best schnitzels,” Mr. Fico said in a video posted on Facebook. He stressed that he wanted a Slovakia without “amateurs and inexperienced blunderers who lead us into adventures such as immigration and war.”
While casting his ballot in Bratislava, Mr Simecka said he would “accept the result of the election with humility”.
The winner of the election will need help from smaller parties to form a majority coalition in the 150-seat parliament. The new government will replace that of the center-right coalition in power since 2020, which has changed three times in three years and which has provided considerable military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.
Mafia ties
The choice of coalition partners includes seven parties that entered Parliament. In addition to the two winners, they are Hlas-SD (15.43%), led by Peter Pellegrini, former vice-president of Smer-SD and successor to Mr. Fico as head of government in 2018, Olano ( 9.34%, center), the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH, 7.14%), Freedom and Solidarity (SaS, liberal, 5.64%) and the Slovak National Party (SNS, 5.8%), according to partial results.
Hlas-SD was born in 2020 from a split within Smer that occurred two years after Mr. Fico’s departure from the post of prime minister following the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée. Mr. Kuciak revealed the existence of links between the Italian mafia and the Fico government in his last article published posthumously.
Slovakia became independent in 1993, following a peaceful separation from the Czech Republic, after Czechoslovakia shook off four decades of communist rule in 1989.
