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Putin's next target: Slovakia (Part 4) Pro-Russia party forms majority coalition [1]

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Date: 2023-10-11  

Previous parts of this story have chronicled the September 30 election in Slovakia, in which the pro-Russian Smer (Direction) party won a plurality with 24% of the vote, followed by the pro-western Progressive Slovakia (PS) party with 19%, and the Hlas (Voice) party of former prime minister Peter Pellegrini with 14.7%. Smer’s leader, former prime minister Robert Fico, has pledged to cut off military aid to Ukraine, opposed sanctions on Russia, and has said things like “war and fascism always came from the West, freedom and peace always from the East.” Unfortunately, Smer will take power in a majority coalition, and Fico will become prime minister for the fourth time.

In coalition negotiations following the election, PS bent over backwards to get Hlas to join PS and two smaller parties in an anti-Fico coalition. PS offered to make Hlas’s Pellegrini the prime minister, to give Hlas the leadership of an equal number of ministries, and to negotiate on leadership of the Interior Ministry. In light of Pellegrini’s antipathy for Fico and Hlas’s pro-Ukraine-EU line, there was some hope that Hlas would agree to this.

Unfortunately, Hlas has rejected PS’s overtures and has opted to go into a coalition with Fico and the nationalist SNS party. Fico rejected Pellegrini’s demand to be named prime minister, and he called Pellegrini a traitor just weeks ago, but Hlas’s presidium nevertheless decided unanimously to join with Smer and SNS, because a “coalition of three is always more practical than a coalition of four, and we also have a social democratic orientation in common with Smer.” Pellegrini stated that PS’s leader Michal Simecka is young and inexperienced and that a four-party coalition of “progressives, liberals, conservatives and social democrats would be incongruous” and would lead to “quarrels.” Simecka replied that Hlas never seriously negotiated with PS, as Hlas “was determined from the beginning to go into a coalition with Smer.”

This is of course bad news for Ukraine and EU unity. How bad remains to be seen. Fico may join with Hungary's Orban and further split the western anti-Russia alliance, or he may govern more pragmatically, as he has done in the past. Hlas and Pellegrini may restrain Fico somewhat. Pellegrini has promised that, under the new government, there will be no change in Slovakia’s foreign policy orientation. Let’s hope he means what he says.

We may have some answers quickly. Fico wants the new government in office in time for him to attend the EU summit on October 26-27, where Ukraine will be high on the agenda.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/10/11/2198642/-Putin-s-next-target-Slovakia-Part-4-Pro-Russia-party-forms-majority-coalition?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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