Until the very last moment of the June 12 election in Slovakia, nobody could say with confidence what the result would be. According to numerous polls taken between March and early June, eight political parties had the chance to step over the 5% minimum of votes and get seats in the parliament. Three of them belonged to the ruling coalition led by Smer (e.g. Smer, SNS and HZDS), five others to the opposition – SDKU, KDH, SaS, SMK and Most-Hid. (for brief characteristics of these parties see an earlier article on the Slovak elections below this text). Both ruling and opposition blocks appeared to be more or less equal. Polls, however, predicted that four out of eight parties were clinging around the critical margin of 5%, nobody knowing on which side they would end up till the very last minute. Another big open question was the election result of the leading and by far strongest party on the scene, the mastodon of the Slovak political scene - Smer. There were three polls published on June 10 and June 11, the last two days before the elections. According to the polling agency Focus, Smer was supposed to get 29,5% of the votes, SNS 7,7%, and HZDS 5.0%. On the other side of the political divide: SDKU 12.1%, SaS 12.4 %, KDH 9,2 %, Most-Hid 6,5 % and SMK 5,2%.
Two other polls were predicting the following results (%):

Smer SNS HZDS SDKU SaS KDH Most-Híd SMK

Polis: 29,1 5,7 4,6 - 12,8 12,8 10.8 7,1 5,0

MVK 32,3 6,2 5,9 - 13,0 11,5 10,6 5,2 5,6

They all got it right in some respect, and wrong in another. Only 6 parties made it into the new parliament – the two losers being the former strongman of Slovakia, Mečiar, and his one man show HZDS with 4,32%, and “Orban´s fifth convoy”, the nationalistic SMK with 4,33%. No democratically minded citizen of Slovakia is going to miss them. With 5,07% - less than half of the votes received in the 2006 elections - SNS almost stayed out in cold off the parliament. But as some citizen noticed with a good dose of humor, that would be a too good result which the Slovaks simply do not deserve.
As expected, the winner of the election was Smer with 34,79% of the votes, noticeably more than expected by polls and 5.6% more than in the 2006 elections. Also, the second strongest, SDKU, got more than predicted – 15,42% - but 3% less than four years ago. As SDKU leader Iveta Radičová correctly noted, after four years in opposition this can hardly be called a success. A political newcomer, the liberal SaS, received support from 12,14% of voters, the conservative “Catholic church” party KDH 8,52% and Most-Híd surprisingly strong support of 8,12% voters.
Voter participation reached 58.83% - 4 % more than in 2006. The fact that the participation did not sink below the psychologically important 50% barrier may to a great degree be attributed to the new kid on the street, the SaS. SaS provided a voting option for citizens disappointed by the performance of SDKU in both government (1998-2006) and opposition, but also to former Smer voters disappointed by Smer´s performance in government.
Very interesting was the strong showing of Smer. Smer´s great - if not unfortunate (for Smer) -result can be attributed by Fico´s success to attract both ultranationalist / anti-Hungarian, and populist “let us have big macho” voters. By attracting SNS as well as HZDS voters, Fico successfully cannibalized his partners in the government and only woke up to the day when his by far strongest party did not have partners to form government with.

New people
Out of the 150 parliament seats, Smer got 62 and SNS 9 deputies – five short of forming the government. On the other side of the political divide, SDKÚ got 28 seats, SaS 22, KDH 15 and Most-Híd 14. With a total of 79 deputies, a failure of four deputies to participate at important votes may lead to government failure to get legislation or budgets through.
“Migration” of just four deputies from one camp to another would also sink the new government. It did happen many times in the recent past – changing coats is not at all unusual in Slovakia´s politics. Can it happen again?
Hard to say: there are around 70 new MPs who have never before been parliamentarians. This may be good news for citizen disappointed by numerous failures of political parties in the past, but it is in no way a guarantee that new parliamentarians will be more resistant to the lures of corruption and power, or more professional, or more likely to listen to the citizen, than the ones ousted by the 2010 election. Some of the new MPs appear to be “unguided missiles”, and especially the SaS contingent is quite rich in such types. Large numbers of new MPs are business people– some of them may be ready to trade their votes or allegiances. Or demand perks and government contracts for not changing them. Four years is long time.
Another notable news is the record low number of ethnic Hungarians in the parliament – judging from the names, there are only 8. Of these, seven have been elected on the Most-Hid list and one on the list of SaS. Most-Hid would actually have brought more Hungarians in, had they not been “over-circled” by a group of four men from a small but very vocal conservative political party called OKS, whose supporters catapulted OKS members into the parliament by preferential votes.
Lastly on gender: Altogether, 23 women were elected into the parliament, less than four years ago. What can better reflect the gender (un)sensitivity of the Slovak society and political parties 20 years after the 1989 revolution?

The Greens’ deal and fiasco
Prior to the election, the leadership of the Slovak Greens made a decision not to run independently as in the EP elections a year earlier, but, paradoxically, to run on the list of the much weaker Party of Democratic Left (SDL). The reason was very simple and Slovak: money. Back in the1990s, SDL was the heir of the Communist party and as such played an important role in Slovak politics, until it was consumed by Smer, whose leader Fico himself grew up to the ranks through CP and SDL. Surprisingly, the trade mark “SDL” was left free and available. This attracted the attention of rich businessmen when some polls suggested that there is segment of the population still remembering SDL in a favourable way. Thus, the SDL free trade mark met money and a new marketing political project was ready to go – the only missing piece being trustworthy people to run for it.
In this situation, the money dried Greens made the suicidal decision to run on the SDL list. Doing that, the leadership of the Slovak Greens in one single step destroyed all they had achieved throughout the previous years, in particular their emerging relationships with environmental and human rights NGOs that led to the Green´s best election result since 1990 in the 2009 EP elections. Greens, running independently and with support of several independent civil society candidates, despite very important tactical mistakes in the campaign, got 2.14% of votes and ended up as the second strongest party, after the SaS, that did not make it into the EP. In the 2010 election the Greens had the chance to become an alternative for frustrated citizen – just as SaS did for a different segment of voters. A number of trustworthy and known public figures and civil society leaders were ready to support the Greens and to run on their list. That would almost certainly have gotten the Greens over 3% of the votes, needed for receiving public financial support for the party and, with floods underlining the Greens’ environmental and climate change messages, possibly even get the Greens into parliament. However, instead of building on the 2009 results, the Green party secretary made, and the leadership confirmed, a deal with SDL and effectively eliminated the Greens from the election by selling them to SDL.
After a massive and extremely costly campaign, SDL got a meager 2,41% of the votes. A much bigger price than the millions paid for the campaign is the effective death of the Slovak Green party as a progressive political force at the very time of accelerating environmental, climate, economic and social crisis, when the Greens are needed as never before.

New government
As expected, on June 14, Slovakia´s president Gašparovič asked the winner of the election Fico to form new government. For the task, Fico got 10 days. Already before the election, all relevant opposition parties – SDKU, SaS, Most-Híd and eventually, after a period of hesitation also KDH – publically promised to the voters not to join Smer in the new government. The ten days generously given to Fisco by the President - Gašparovič himself being president only thanks to Fico – provided the acting prime minister with enough time to test how serious the words of opposition parties’ leaders were. All four parties were quick to reaffirm their intention to form a new government without Smer to the public and the President, and started their negotiations almost immediately after the election. There were unconfirmed, yet by media widely reported rumors, that Fico was not giving up and offered KDH half of the seats in the government and even the position of the prime minister. These offers were never confirmed by KDH and were denied by Smer. One of the new “unguided missile” MPs for SaS, a businessman named Matovič, presenting himself as an anti-corruption fighter, announced to the media that he had been offered a 20 million euro bribe for switching to Smer. When asked by the media who made that offer, Matovič did not answer, nor did he report the case to the police, despite the fact that to offer a bribe is a criminal act in Slovakia. In a bizarre follow up, the SaS leadership reported the situation to the police, but the general impression left is that Matovič made up the story to gain publicity and – maybe – increase his personal price to the new government.
After Fico failed to form a new government, formal coalition negotiations started between the leaders of four parties, Iveta Radičová (future prime minister of Slovakia and the first woman in that position in the modern history of Slovaks and Czechs), Richard Sulik (SaS leader and businessman, freshman in politics), Béla Bugár (leader of Most/Híd and former SMK leader, seasoned in Slovak politics) and Ján Figeľ (former EC Commissioner and leader of KDH, modern by KDH standard).
These negotiations made a quick end to any expectations about reducing the size of government as a part of cost cutting measures – the new one will have 15 members just as the previous one. What they agreed on was to reduce the number of deputy ministers to just one per each ministry. Despite the failure to make the government smaller, it appears that personal dynamics between the leaders are good and so far, all showed restraint in their positions and demands.
Tensions, however, arose almost immediately, when KDH declared that they insisted on treaties with the Vatican being signed as part of the program declaration of the new government. (It needs to be remembered, that the question of Vatican treaties caused the collapse of the previous right-of-centre government that led to the 2006 pre-term election paving the way to power for Fico). At the same time, the liberal SaS was promising marriage rights to gay and lesbian voters and the decriminalization of marihuana to others. Eventually, Sulik and Figel agreed that they both would give up their demands to have a Vatican treaty, marihuana and gay marriages mentioned in the new government program declaration. But there is no doubt that these issues will continue to be challenge.
Not less complicated are debates about dividing key government and parliament positions between the four parties. They eventually agreed to split ministries in the following way: SDKU will get the position of the prime minister (Iveta Radičova) and the ministries for finance, foreign affairs, education and justice, SaS will get the ministries for economy, social affairs, defense and culture plus the position of the speaker of parliament (to be given to Richard Sulik), KDH will control the ministries for transportation, health care and the interior, and Most-Hid will control agriculture, human and minorities rights and environment - a ministry that was to be cancelled by the Fico government, would he stay in power.
As this article goes on the web, there are many unfinished debates, one of them being who is going to control EU funds and the power that goes with such control in a heavily corrupt environment. Both SDKU and KDH are pushing hard to control them – and we shall see whether the real motivation behind that pressure is the sincere desire to limit if not eliminate ubiquitous and rampant corruption in the use of EU funds in Slovakia, or the desire to “milk EU funds” and channel benefits from that corruption to party clientele. In early July 2010, we still can hope for the better.

Dr. Juraj Mesik has been extensively involved in the development of the environmental movement and the broader civil society. Mr. Mesík is also the author of numerous commentaries and analytical articles published in opinion-making dailies.

Read also the previous article of Juraj Mesík "Slovakia 2010 - An election with only limited choice" assesing the state of Slovak politics and the pre-election debate the whole article here