Visit our website:
http://www.france24.com
Like us on Facebook:
https://www.facebook.com/FRANCE24.English
Follow us on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/France24_en
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00 Now, the president of Slovakia says she will give a mandate to former hardline Prime Minister
00:05 Robert Fico to form a government.
00:07 The pro-Kremlin candidate won Sunday's vote with a campaign on ending Slovakia's military
00:12 aid to Ukraine.
00:14 It's an unlikely comeback for that former leader who fell from power after the murder
00:18 of an investigative journalist.
00:20 He will now have to find much-needed allies, though, to build a coalition.
00:24 Well, to talk more about the situation in Slovakia with me now, I'm joined on the set
00:28 by Lukas Macek, you're the head of the Centre Grande Europe at the Jacques Delors Institute.
00:33 Thanks for coming in to speak to us.
00:34 Let's start with Robert Fico's victory.
00:36 Did it come as a surprise to you?
00:38 Not completely, because actually maybe one year, two years ago, it would have been a
00:43 surprise.
00:44 But now all the polls showed actually that he was a favorite for this election.
00:50 So nobody can say it's a surprise.
00:54 So how do you explain his win, then?
00:56 Slovakia was the first country to deliver fighter jets to Ukraine.
01:00 Why this change in support?
01:01 Well, I think the biggest cause of Fico's success is all the failures of previous government.
01:11 It was a coalition which started with a huge majority in the parliament, with quite electoral
01:16 triumph three years ago.
01:20 And for various reasons, partly because of the context, of course, COVID crisis, Ukraine
01:26 war, inflation, and so on.
01:28 But also very much because of internal problems of this coalition and personal rivalries and
01:34 personal hostilities within the coalition.
01:38 Actually this coalition got discredited in a very strong way.
01:43 And actually a lot of voters actually wanted to sanction what they perceived as a very
01:50 chaotic period.
01:53 And primary responsibility for that was the one of the former coalition.
01:59 So for you, this wasn't so much a vote against the war in Ukraine.
02:02 It was really a vote against the predecessors.
02:04 Yes.
02:05 And of course, it was a vote about the consequences, the everyday life consequences for Slovak
02:10 citizens and especially for what is the traditional core electorate of SMER, Robert Fico's party,
02:18 which means people rather outside of big cities, people who are economically and socially more
02:25 fragile and for whom the current situation is.
02:29 So there was also a part of nostalgia because I think for a lot of people, Robert Fico's
02:35 previous terms are connected with the idea of a relative prosperity, calm situation and
02:41 so on.
02:42 So somehow it was also maybe a kind of nostalgia and hope that with him things will become
02:47 normal, which is, of course, an illusion because the context will not change.
02:51 But I think it's one of possible explanations as well.
02:55 That's interesting because also it seems like Robert Fico is someone who's had quite a checkered
02:59 past.
03:00 It wasn't all glory days.
03:01 Clearly.
03:02 But precisely, I spoke about people who are the core electorate of SMER, who are people
03:08 who actually are not convinced at all by all the arguments about, let's say, the black
03:14 part of his record or the affairs connected to investigation corruption or the, let's
03:23 say, all the things for which actually approximately half of Slovak population is strongly against
03:30 Robert Fico.
03:31 But his electorate is not really interested in these issues and is not believing it because
03:36 – and it's a specificity of Slovakia – that the split between, let's say, traditional
03:42 journalism and the kind of disinformation scene, if I may say, is really huge and important
03:51 proportion of Slovak citizens are actually totally oriented towards the conspiracy theories
03:59 and alternative media.
04:03 And Robert Fico was very successful and very efficient in using these tools.
04:08 All right.
04:09 Well, let's look forward now.
04:10 The big challenge for him is going to be building a coalition, if he is to form a government.
04:14 How easy is that going to be for him?
04:16 It will be difficult because there's no obvious, easy and stable solution.
04:22 Of course, there's one which is, let's say, very logical with two other parties,
04:28 one of them which is a far-right party with whom he already used to govern.
04:32 So it should be quite easy for him.
04:35 The second one, which is some kind of kingmaker, actually, of this election, which is the party
04:40 which arrived third in these elections with approximately 14 percent of votes.
04:46 Actually, these people are former SMER members, so it's always difficult to recreate a coalition
04:53 with people whom basically you consider as renegades or traitors.
04:58 So it might be difficult.
05:01 And also the traditional ally, who is the Slovak National Party, which is the far-right
05:07 sorry, nationalistic party, is a more complicated partner than as usual, because what happened
05:14 during these elections is actually with a system of preference voting, a lot of people
05:20 from below of the candidate list actually were elected and some of them are very far
05:26 away from the establishment of the party.
05:28 Some of them are actually very close to parties which are even more far-right than the Slovak
05:35 Nationalist Party.
05:36 So creating a coalition which would need the support of these people could be a challenge
05:43 even for somebody as experienced as Robert Fitzel.
05:46 All right, Lukas, thanks so much for coming in to speak to us.
05:49 Lukas Metzeck, thank you very much.
05:50 Thank you.
05:50 Thank you very much.