A party headed by a pro-Kremlin figure came out top after securing more votes than expected in an election in Slovakia, preliminary results show, in what could pose a challenge to NATO and EU unity on Ukraine. <\/p>\n
According to preliminary results released by Slovakia\u2019s Statistical Office at 9 a.m. local time, Robert Fico\u2019s populist SMER party won 22.9% of the vote. <\/p>\n
Progressive Slovakia (PS), a liberal and pro-Ukrainian party won 17.9%. <\/p>\n
Fico, a two-time former prime minister, now has a chance to regain the job but must first seek coalition partners as his party did not secure a big enough share of the vote to govern on its own. <\/p>\n
The moderate-left Hlas party, led by a former SMER member and formed as an offshoot of SMER following internal disputes, came third with 14.7% of the vote, <\/strong>and <\/strong>could play kingmaker. <\/p>\n With seven political parties reaching the 5% threshold needed to enter the parliament, coalition negotiations will almost certainly include multiple players and could be long and messy. <\/p>\n While not a landslide, SMER\u2019s result is better than expected \u2013 last opinion polls published earlier this week showed SMER and PS neck and neck. <\/p>\n Fico has pledged an immediate end to Slovak military support for Ukraine and promised to block Ukraine\u2019s NATO ambitions in what would upend Slovakia\u2019s staunch support for Ukraine. <\/p>\n Michal \u0160ime\u010dka, the leader of PS, said the result was \u201cbad news for the country.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe fact of the matter is that SMER is the winner. And we of course respect that although we think it\u2019s bad news for the country. And it will be even worse news if Mr Fico forms the government,\u201d he said at a news conference early on Sunday. <\/p>\n Slovakia\u2019s President Zuzana \u010caputov\u00e1 said before the election that she would ask the leader of the strongest party to form the government, meaning Fico will get the first stab at forming a government. <\/p>\n Fico and SMER have not yet commented on the results. <\/p>\n \u0160ime\u010dka said his party will do \u201ceverything it could\u201d to prevent Fico from governing. <\/p>\n \u201cI will be in touch with other political leaders of parties that were elected to parliament \u2014 on an informal basis \u2014 to discuss ways of preventing that,\u201d he said. \u201cWe think it will be really bad news for the country, for our democracy, for our rule of law, and for our international standing and for our finances and for our economy if Mr Fico forms the government.\u201d <\/p>\n Peter Pellegrini, the leader of Hlas, said his party was \u201cvery pleased with the result.\u201d <\/p>\n \u201cThe results so far show that Hlas will be a party without which it will be impossible to form any kind of normal, functioning coalition government,\u201d he said, adding that the party will \u201cmake the right decision\u201d to become part of a government that will lead Slovakia out of the \u201cdecay and crisis that (the country\u2019s previous leaders) got us into.\u201d <\/p>\n Hlas has been vague about its position on Ukraine in the election campaign. Pellegrini has previously suggested Slovakia \u201chad nothing left to donate\u201d to Kyiv, but also said that the country should continue to manufacture ammunition that is shipped to Ukraine. <\/p>\n Slovakia, an eastern European nation of about 5.5 million people, was going to the polls to choose its fifth prime minister in four years after seeing a series of shaky coalition governments. <\/p>\n A SMER-led government could have serious consequences for the region. Slovakia is a member of both NATO and the European Union, was among the handful of European countries pushing for tough EU sanctions against Russia and has donated a large amount of military equipment to Ukraine. <\/p>\n But this will likely change under Fico, who has blamed \u201cUkrainian Nazis and fascists\u201d for provoking Russia\u2019s President Vladimir Putin into launching the invasion, repeating the false narrative Putin has used to justify his invasion. <\/p>\n While in opposition, Fico became a close ally of Hungary\u2019s Prime Minister Victor Orban, especially when it came to criticism of the European Union. There is speculation that, if he returns to power, Fico and Orban could gang up together and create obstacles for Brussels. If Poland\u2019s governing Law and Justice party manages to win a third term in Polish parliamentary elections next month, this bloc of EU troublemakers could become even stronger. <\/p>\n Meanwhile, the liberal PS party had been pushing for a completely different future for Slovakia \u2013 including a continued strong support for Kyiv and strong links with the West. <\/p>\n Fico previously served as Slovakia\u2019s prime minister for more than a decade, first between 2006 and 2010 and then again from 2012 to 2018. <\/p>\n He was forced to resign in March 2018 after weeks of mass protests over the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fianc\u00e9e, Martina Ku\u0161n\u00edrov\u00e1. Kuciak reported on corruption among the country\u2019s elite, including people directly connected to Fico and his party SMER. <\/p>\n The campaign was marked by concerns over disinformation, with V\u011bra Jourov\u00e1, the European Commission\u2019s top digital affairs official, saying in advance the vote would be a \u201ctest case\u201d of how effective social media companies have been in countering Russian propaganda in Slovakia. <\/p>\n Polls suggest Fico\u2019s pro-Russia sentiments are shared by many Slovaks. <\/p>\n According to a survey by GlobSec, a Bratislava-based security think tank, only 40% of Slovaks believed Russia was responsible for the war in Ukraine, the lowest proportion among the eight central and eastern European and Baltic states GlobSec focused on. In the Czech Republic, which used to form one country with Slovakia, 71% of people blame Russia for the war. <\/p>\n The same research found that 50% of Slovaks perceive the United States \u2013 the country\u2019s long-term ally \u2013 as a security threat. <\/p>\n\n A party headed by a pro-Kremlin figure came out top after securing more votes than expected in an election in Slovakia, preliminary results show, in what could pose a challenge to NATO and EU unity on Ukraine. According to preliminary results released by Slovakia\u2019s Statistical Office at 9 a.m. local time, Robert Fico\u2019s populist SMER <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9480,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-9479","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9479"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9479\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Serious consequences for the region<\/h2>\n