Slovakia anti-graft party wins elections
BRATISLAVA: A centre-right opposition party focused on rooting out graft was on course to form Slovakia’s next government on Sunday after voters ousted the governing populist-left in a general election marked by an angry backlash over the 2018 murder of a journalist probing corruption in the eurozone state.
Vowing to push through anti-corruption measures in the judiciary and police, the leader of the winning OLANO party Igor Matovic galvanised voter outrage over the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee, and the high-level graft their deaths exposed.
The killings -- allegedly a hit ordered by a businessman with connections to politicians - triggered the largest anti-government protests since communist times and led to the toppling of the powerful head of the populist-left SmerSocial Democracy (Smer-sd) Robert Fico as prime minister in 2018.
Fico’s party colleague Peter Pellegrini took over as premier, but he conceded defeat overnight, congratulating Matovic on his stunning victory in Saturday’s vote.
“People want us to clean up Slovakia. They want us to make Slovakia a fair country where laws will apply to everyone,” Matovic told reporters overnight as results showed his party skyrocketing to victory by more than quadrupling its seats.
“It was the death of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova that woke up Slovakia,” he said, vowing that his administration will have “zero tolerance for corruption.”
But according to Bratislava-based political analyst Juraj Marusiak, the centre-right OLANO’S win should not be seen as an outright rejection of populist politics.
He characterised Smer-sd’s ousting as a “victory of right-wing conservative populism” reminiscent of the rise of right-wing populist parties in neighbouring EU countries.
“In this respect, the situation in Slovakia resembles that of its neighbours, Hungary or Poland or the Czech Republic,” he said, but characterised OLANO as more a “heterogeneous, protest-type party” than other governing rightwing parties in the region.