A party headed by a pro-Kremlin figure came out top after securing more votes than expected in an election in Slovakia, preliminary results show, in what could pose a challenge to NATO and EU unity on Ukraine.
According to preliminary results released by Slovakia’s Statistical Office at 9 a.m. local time, Robert Fico’s populist SMER party won 22.9% of the vote.
Progressive Slovakia (PS), a liberal and pro-Ukrainian party won 17.9%.
Fico, a two-time former prime minister, now has a chance to regain the job but must first seek coalition partners as his party did not secure a big enough share of the vote to govern on its own.
I think it’s important to point out, that “winning elections” does not mean that the majority of Slovaks support them. They just won as a party with most votes. (23% so not even a quarter)
They just won the mandate to form a government for which they’ll need at least two other parties to form a majority. The anti EU/NATO stance might be a problem here as it’s not universally shared among possible coalition partners.
It is misleading to draw such a strong “Slovakia is pro-russian country” conclusion based on a single party getting the most votes, because many of the other parties that are at the very least silent if not outright pro-nato/eu with significant amount of the votes.
Even comparison to Hungary is a huge stretch as Orbán’s party alone got more than 50% of the votes. As it is now, Smer has to form a coalition with other (in many ways more moderate) parties which is already not 100% given - it would not be the first time when the winning party ends up in opposition. And going forward they either avoid these friction points (so they end up acting more moderate) or they risk coalition breaking apart with early election or opposition forming government.