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Home , Eduard Heger, We Are Family (Slovakia)

ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 29, No. 1 (SK)

May 2020

Slovakia political briefing: Political briefing: Slovakia’s New Government Peter Csanyi

1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.

+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin

Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01

Slovakia Political briefing: Slovakia’s New Government

The center-right populist opposition party (Ordinary People and Independent Personalities- OĽaNO) and its leader, Igor Matovič, got 25% of the 29 February vote. It has 53 seats in the 150-seat parliament. The ruling leftist Smer-Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party led by former PM was second with 18.3% or 38 seats. On 4 March, the country’s president Zuzana Čaputová asked Matovič to create a new government. Igor Matovič agreed to govern with the pro-business (SaS) party; the conservative For People (Za Ľudí), a party established by former president Andrej Kiska; and We Are Family (Sme Rodina), a populist right-wing group that is allied with France’s far-right party.

The now-opposition Smer-SD party had been in power since 2006. However, their reputation was tarnished by political turmoil following the 2018 slayings of the investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée. Kuciak reported on tax evasion and fraud among Slovak businesspeople connected to Smer-SD. Kuciak’s murder triggered large demonstrations which eventually led to Fico and the country’s police chief stepping down, as well as to the election of anti-corruption activist Čaputová as president.

General elections and the formation of a new government

For two decades, general had belonged to two strongmen: either Vladimír Mečiar or Robert Fico. After the last election, a third man broke the mould — Igor Matovič, the 46-year-old “enfant terrible” of Slovak politics whose anti-corruption OĽaNO movement surged to a surprise victory over the long-ruling Smer-SD party led by Fico.

Two years after the brutal murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée shocked the country, parliamentary elections have brought palpable change to Slovakia. It is not a change predicted by analysts or polls. Nor is it the kind of change longed for by liberals who had hoped to see the /Together (PS/SPOLU) coalition in government following success last year in presidential and elections. In the end, PS/SPOLU was left out in the cold, despite winning more votes than two other parliamentary parties. They fell short of the minimum seven per cent threshold needed to enter parliament as

1 a coalition — by less than a 1,000 votes. Michal Truban and Miroslav Beblavý, leaders of PS and SPOLU, respectively, announced their resignations immediately after the elections.

The final vote tally confirmed the emergence of OĽaNO as the major new force in Slovak politics after more than a decade of rule by the populist-left Smer-SD. It was a rise as spectacular as it was unanticipated. At the end of last year, Matovič’s party was polling at between five and six per cent. In January, it inched up to eight per cent. After several well- wrought campaign moves by Matovič, it was hovering around 13-15 per cent two weeks before the election. Then on the Election Day, OĽaNO won an overwhelming 25 per cent of the vote.

Analysts say the result reflects voter anger over entrenched corruption in a country that many describe as a “Mafia state”. Disenchantment with politics as usual intensified as the investigation into Ján Kuciak’s murder revealed alleged links between the businessman accused of ordering the killing and senior figures in the police, judiciary and government.

Smer-SD finished in second place with 18.2 per cent of the vote — a decline of 10 percentage points from 2016. With the nationalist, (SNS) and the ethnic Hungarian MOST-HID parties failing to hit the five per cent threshold to enter parliament, Robert Fico’s party is the only member of the former governing coalition to return to parliament.

The far-right People’s Party Our Slovakia (ĽSNS) of Marian Kotleba came in fourth place with 7.9 per cent of the vote. Though a slightly worse result than four years ago, it was enough to give ĽSNS three extra seats, for a total of 17. Along with Kotleba, who faces prosecution for using neo-Nazi symbols, three men convicted of extremist crimes are among the party’s new crop of MPs. But ĽSNS fared considerably worse than pre-election polls suggested it might and, probably, the elections have managed to stop the rise of far-right extremism.

Representatives of four parties of the future ruling coalition, OĽaNO, Sme Rodina, SaS, and Za Ľudí, met with President Zuzana Čaputová on March 14 to inform her of post nominations of the future government. They concluded talks over their distribution on night before. The talks lasted only 13 days; Igor Matovič, leader of the winning party OĽaNO, admitted that reaching the agreement was prompted by the escalating epidemiologic situation in Slovakia caused by the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus.

Finally on March 21, Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová appointed a center-right coalition government headed by Igor Matovič, leader of OĽaNO party. Matovič and his team were sworn in at a ceremony with participants wearing protective masks as a precaution against

2 coronavirus. Slovakia had reported 137 cases of the virus and no deaths by the day of appointment of the new cabinet.

Challenges for the new cabinet

The new government replaced the center-left Smer-SD party that had ruled since 2012, a period of solid growth, though its popularity slipped after the 2018 murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée which led to massive street protests. As it was mentioned, the Ordinary People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) will rule with three other parties: Sme Rodina (We are Family), a socially conservative and Eurosceptic party; SaS (Freedom and Solidarity), an economically ; and Za Ľudí (For the People), a center-right party led by former president Andrej Kiska.

After the negotiations and coalition talks, a free-marketer Richard Sulík, the head of SaS became the deputy prime minister, and OĽaNO’s Eduard Heger, a former manager of several private companies tapped to be finance minister, will lead economic policy.

Analysts agree that Matovič’s government could not be starting work at a more difficult time. Since March 15, Slovakia has been in a state of emergency as it battles to keep COVID- 19 from spiraling out of control. When we look at the conditions that previous governments entered into, this one is starting with the worst situation we’ve ever had. They have to deal with issues that are not ideological or political. Nobody could have expected that.

Composed of 12 men and three women, the cabinet is full of political novices with no previous experience in power. The new faces personify the parties’ promise to fight corruption. The ministries of interior, agriculture and investment are all led by prominent anti-corruption figures. Not surprisingly, the most powerful portfolios are in the hands of coalition leader OĽaNO, which is ideologically amorphous but won the election on an anti-corruption ticket.

Roman Mikulec, the new interior minister, is a former director of the military’s secret service who exposed extensive asset-stripping within the institution in 2013. Veronika Remišová from For the People (Za Ľudí) will head the deputy prime minister’s Office for Investments and Informatization, as it is known. She wants to focus on the effective use of EU funds across Slovakia. As an opposition lawmaker in the last parliament, Remišová uncovered several big corruption scandals involving EU cash.

There are people who have shown good qualifications in the past and could bring valuable experiences. For example, the new justice minister, Mária Kolíková, who used to work as a

3 state secretary at the justice ministry, or the new foreign minister, Ivan Korčok. Korčok is a seasoned diplomat not affiliated with any political party who returned to after serving as ambassador to the United States. The new minister of defense, Jaroslav Naď, has professed clear pro-NATO and pro-European views. Meanwhile, Matovič has reiterated that he wants to be a reliable partner for Slovakia‘s foreign allies.

In addition to fighting coronavirus, the new cabinet vows to battle corruption, clean up the judiciary and protect the economy. Prime Minister Igor Matovič also says he wants to promote tolerance towards minorities. In his first speech after being sworn in, he said he dreamt of a Slovakia where people from national minorities won’t be moved to the side just because their mothers taught them a different language.

However, critics say Matovič has himself been unreliable and unpredictable. Over the past decade, he has clashed not only with government politicians, but also with his partners from opposition parties, and he makes no bones about portraying OĽaNO as a movement that breaks the political mold. Analysts describe him as a populist and conservative politician, able to switch between different ideologies while tirelessly beating his anti-corruption drum. He has some good characteristics that can help in a crisis situation like this. But he also has traits that can make it even more complicated. Matovič can be hard to predict and is prone to conflict. Experts question how stable the new government will be after years of entrenched rule by the nominally left-wing Smer-SD.

Commentators also agree that Matovič’s government faces enormous challenges other than coronavirus over the next four years. Slovakia is a leader on global corruption charts and public trust in democratic institutions and the justice system is at a historical low. The country is still recovering from the brutal murder of journalist Ján Kuciak in 2018. Slovakia’s judiciary is in crisis, with 13 judges accused of corruption in an unprecedented case. Meanwhile, the health system was in trouble long before COVID-19 hit. Igor Matovič knows that he will have to go hand-in-hand with dealing with trust in the state, solving the economic crisis and fighting coronavirus. The new government is entering a fight on three battlefronts at once.

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