Extreme rights gain in Slovakia as PM Fico loses majority

Slovakia’s leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico said on Sunday he would begin difficult coalition talks after he won elections on a anti-refugee platform but lost his parliamentary majority as smaller parties, including the extreme right, scored first-time seats.

A conservative party leader described the outcome as a “big earthquake” in Slovak politics, as analysts cautioned that Fico would struggle to build a governing coalition with a total of eight parties reaching the five percent threshold to enter parliament.

With 99 per cent of votes counted, Fico’s Smer-Social Democrats (Smer-SD) party had 49 seats, down sharply from his comfortable 83-seat majority in the 150 member parliament.

Having earlier dubbed the result a “big mishmash” of parties, Fico announced on Sunday morning the start of coalition talks. “Today we begin the first preliminary negotiations”, vowing to “try to assemble a meaningful and stable government. It isn’t going to be easy. We’ll have to do everything to rule out the likelihood of early elections.” 

The liberal Freedom and Solidarity SaS came second with 21 seats, followed by the conservative OLANO-NOVA which took 19 seats. Its leader Igor Matovic told Slovakia’s TASR news agency: “This is a big earthquake.” Building a coalition “could take weeks, even months”, political analyst Samuel Abraham told AFP, adding that for Fico to clinch his third term, he would likely “distance himself” from the far right and woo three or four centrist parties like SaS.

The far-right Slovak National Party (SNS) made it back into parliament after a four-year absence with 15 seats. The extreme right nationalist LS-Nase Slovensko (Our Slovakia) secured 14 seats to enter parliament for the first time.