Slovakia’s far Right loses regional elections
Germany’s Green party overtakes liberals in opinion polls as coalition talks continue
BRATISLAVA/FRANKFURT, (Reuters) – The far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia lost Saturday’s regional elections, turning the Central European country against the trend of far-right gains in Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic in recent months.
Right-wing and anti-immigrant parties have been on the rise across Europe after years of slow economic growth and the arrival of more than a million migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa.
Slovakia’s economy has boomed and the country has seen little immigration, but rising public anger over graft scandals linked to conventional parties has generated support for fringe parties and protest groups.
Regional elections four years ago saw a surprising first-time victory of People’s Party chairman Marian Kotleba as governor in Banska Bystrica, central Slovakia, with his party winning 8% of the vote and its first-ever seats in national parliament last year.
Support for the party, which has launched a petition to hold a referendum to exit the EU and NATO, has since risen to about 10%, making it the third-strongest group after leftist Smer and euroskeptic liberals, according to opinion polls.
On Saturday, Kotleba lost the reelection bid to an entrepreneur Jan Lunter, a non-partisan endorsed by all parties except the far-right, near-complete results from the Statistics Office showed on Sunday.
Kotleba’s right-hand man, party deputy chairman Milan Uhrik also lost the governor’s race in the southwestern Nitra region.
Kotleba and two other lawmakers are facing extremism charges and prosecutors took steps in May to ban the entire party, saying it posed a threat to Slovakia’s democratic system.
The party, whose members have organized torch-lit marches wearing black uniforms modeled on a World War II Nazi puppet state, denies any links to fascism. Last year they started patrolling trains, some carrying legally-held weapons, in regions with a strong Roma population.
In another upset, Prime Minister Robert Fico’s leftist Smer Party only won two reelection bids, losing four regions to center-right opposition candidates, a sign of its weakening grip on power in the euro zone country.
General elections last year saw Smer’s support shrink to 28.3% from 44.4% in 2012, but it is still the strongest party with double the support of the euroskeptic liberal Freedom and Solidarity Party, whose candidate was elected governor of the capital Bratislava region.
Meanwhile, Germany’s environmentalist Green party polled at its highest level this year in a survey published on Sunday, overtaking Chancellor Angela Merkel’s other would-be coalition partner as talks to form a new government continued.
An agreement would see Merkel extend her 12-year spell at the helm of Europe’s largest economy, during which she has helped avoid a collapse of the euro zone and established her country as the bloc’s economic powerhouse.
Merkel must bring together the Greens, the pro-business Free Democrats (FDP) and her own conservative bloc to secure a majority, with sticking points including immigration caps, whether to end coal production and increasing defense spending.
The poll published by German daily Bild put the Greens at 11%, up by one percentage point from a week earlier, while the FDP fell by the same amount to 10%.
Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian CSU sister party were stable at 31% while the Social Democrats, who have said they would not renew their ruling coalition with the conservatives, slipped by one percentage point to 21%.
Party leaders are slated to meet on Monday evening before the larger negotiating teams launch into more detailed talks.
The FDP leader, Christian Lindner, said in an interview published on Sunday his party did not fear new elections if the negotiations failed.
But a new vote could see more gains for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), which surged into parliament last month after a campaign that channeled public anger at Merkel’s 2015 decision to leave Germany’s border open to migrants.
The euroskeptic AfD was stable in Sunday’s survey at 12% while leftwing Die Linke rose by one percentage point to poll to 10%.
Polling firm Emnid interviewed 1,476 people between 26 and 30 October.