Slovaks vote in poll haunted by murders

>>BRATISLAVA: Slovaks voted in a general election yesterday with the governing populists fighting for survival amid outrage over the 2018 gangland-style murder of a journalist whose stories exposed high-level corruption plaguing the eurozone country.

Allegedly a hit ordered by a businessman with connections to politicians, the killing of Jan Kuciak, which also took the life of his fiancee Martina Kusnirova, has become a lightning rod for public outrage at graft in public life.

Hit hard by the fallout of the murder, most surveys suggest that Robert Fico’s governing populist-left Smer-Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party is running neck-and-neck with OLaNO, a surging centre-right opposition party focused on rooting out corruption.

OLaNO outpaced Smer-SD by 3.5% in a last-minute AKO/Focus agency opinion survey published this week in the neighbouring Czech Republic to bypass a pre-election polling ban in Slovakia.

“Change is much needed here,” said Daniela Jonasova, a 35-year-old office clerk, who said she voted for OLaNO. “I like the way [OLaNO leader Igor] Matovic points out what is wrong in Slovakia — I believe he’ll bring a real change,” she added, referring to OLaNO’s anti-graft focus.

According to political analyst Radoslav Stefancik, “the election is primarily about the desire for decency in politics. Instead of protesting against the ruling Smer-SD party on the streets, people will do so in polling stations.”

The double murder triggered the largest anti-government protests since communist times and toppled Fico as prime minister, with his party colleague Peter Pellegrini taking over the reins. It also propelled Zuzana Caputova, a liberal lawyer and anti-graft activist, out of nowhere to win last year’s presidential race in this country of 5.4 million people.