Sunday, March 11, 2012

Slovakia: Social Democratic Party wins majority



The Smer-Social Democracy party of Robert Fico won handily with 44.4 per cent of the vote and winning 83 seats out 150 in the parliament. This will give his party a clear majority. This is first time since the communist regime fell that there has been one party with a majority.

Fico has said that he will maintain the welfare state while increasing corporate taxes and income taxes on the highest earners. The four party center-right coalition he defeated combined received only 51 seat. Voters were very angry at a corruption scandal, the Gorilla scandal.

The Ordinary People party running on an anti-corruption platform managed to win 16 while an ultra-nationalist party did poorly falling below the 5 per cent level. Because of voter disgust with corruption predictions were the turnout would be light as low as 44 per cent. This turned out to be quite wrong with turnout near 60 per cent.

The outgoing Prime Minister Iveta Radicova's party won only 5.9 per cent of the vote. She is quitting politics to lecture at Oxford University! For more see this article.

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