Slovakia has elected a president who cements the power of pro-Russian populist Robert Fico. The Government candidate and ally of the Prime Minister, Peter Pellegrini, has achieved 53.12% of the votes in the second round held this Saturday compared to 46.87% for the independent and pro-European diplomat Ivan Korcok. After a surprising victory in the first round, Korcok and his followers hoped to achieve the Head of State to serve as a counterweight to the Executive power. They didn’t make it. Pellegrini’s success is a triumph for Fico, who obtains the support of a key institution to continue with the process of reforms that he has undertaken, which are reminiscent of Viktor Orbán’s Hungary.
The headlines this Sunday from the independent press in Slovakia, one of the targets of Fico’s attacks, show the gloomy atmosphere in which the hopes of those who oppose the Government have been plunged. “Fico has also kidnapped the presidential palace,” writes the director of Sme. “Fico wants to be the president of revenge. Let’s defend ourselves,” he publishes Diary of Nwho believes that Pellegrini will be nothing more than a puppet of the prime minister.
After midnight, when the results already showed Pellegrini’s firm victory, he assured that the government coalition, of which he is a part, will remain stable. “I will not be an uncritical admirer of the Government,” he said in statements that were not very credible to the opposition, with Fico celebrating next to him. The winner of the night also reiterated his support for the Government’s position on Ukraine. Bratislava has withdrawn military support from kyiv, although it does not interfere in defense industry contracts.
Pellegrini, 48, was a faithful squire of Fico for two decades in Smer, the party that defines itself as social democratic, but that maintains illiberal, homophobic, misogynistic and xenophobic speeches. When in 2018 the then prime minister was forced to resign amid the social upheaval generated by the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his partner, Martina Kusnirova, Pellegrini replaced him in office. Two years later, after losing the legislative elections, he broke with Smer and founded Hlas (Voice), with whom he came third in the elections on September 30.
In the face of Fico’s outrages, Pellegrini cultivated an image of moderation and independence that collapsed when events demonstrated his firm loyalty to the prime minister. Although they do not have a good personal relationship, Pellegrini integrated without major difficulty into the coalition government headed by Fico and completed by the far-right ultranationalists of the Slovak National Party (SNS). Since the presidency of Parliament, the president-elect has supported and facilitated all the measures promoted by the Executive, which have set off alarm bells in Brussels.
In the election campaign, Pellegrini has used the same approach that worked for Orbán in Hungary: showing his rival as a belligerent who wants to drag the country into war in Ukraine against Russia, in contrast to his supposed commitment to peace. which Korcok described as a capitulation to Moscow. To attract far-right voters, the leader of Hlas made a staunch defense of national sovereignty, although he had to clarify that this did not imply an exit from NATO or the EU.
Without counterweight
Pellegrini’s victory plunges a part of the country, which is concentrated in the cities with a higher educational and economic level, into despair. The young analyst Filip Bajtos, from think tank Bratislava Institute of Politics, summarizes the feelings of those who have come out to protest against the Executive almost weekly and have thrown their support behind former Foreign Minister Korcok. With control of the presidency, he says, “they can destroy the state. There will be no one influential or with any power to stop them.” Participation this Saturday reached 61.14%, the second highest since 1999.
In his little more than five months at the head of the Government, Fico has focused his efforts on purging the justice system, the police and the secret services. With dozens of people linked to Smer convicted of corruption and other crimes and thousands awaiting trial, the Executive has undertaken an express reform of the penal code that reduces penalties for crimes such as corruption and advances the statute of limitations. The populist prime minister, who was charged in 2022 with crimes related to organized crime and abuse of power, has also closed the office of the Special Prosecutor, which investigated serious cases.
Limited powers
The president’s powers are limited, but he can stop laws by sending them back to Parliament or sending them to the Constitutional Court, as the environmentalist and progressive president Zuzana Caputová – who will transfer power to Pellegrini in June – has done with the reform of the penal code. The head of State also approves the proposals for the appointment of ministers, head of the secret services, and the presidents of the Constitutional and Supreme Courts. He also has the ability to grant pardons.
Brussels has warned the Government that if it continues on this path it may initiate procedures that lead to the suspension of European funds, as in Hungary. Fico, like Orbán, has also launched a campaign against independent media, while planning a reform of public radio and television to turn it into a state platform at the service of the Government. In the wake of the Kremlin that has inspired Hungary so much, it also has civil society in its sights, pointing out NGOs as “foreign agents.”
With the war in Ukraine at a time of critical stalemate, Slovak foreign policy, openly opposed to kyiv and favorable to Moscow, is also of concern. Last Thursday, Fico commemorated the 79th anniversary of the liberation of Bratislava by the Red Army, together with the ambassadors of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. The prime minister, as usual, accused the West of not wanting peace in Ukraine. On the second anniversary of the beginning of the Russian invasion, the head of the Government once again blamed the conflict on “the neo-Nazis of Ukraine” and accused the West of looking the other way while “Slavs die.”
Peter Spác, a Slovak political scientist at the Czech University of Masaryk, observes from the outside how his country is gaining “a bad reputation among traditional allies such as Poland or the Czech Republic, due to the government’s position in the war in Ukraine.” “Slovakia is being relegated to the periphery,” he laments. The Czech Executive, a traditional friend of the Slovak, no longer trusts his neighbor. Prague has suspended intergovernmental consultations with Bratislava indefinitely and the Czech Prime Minister, Petr Fiala, has called a foreign policy that includes meetings such as the one held by the Slovak Foreign Minister, Juraj Blanár, a “threat to Europe’s security.” recently in Turkey with his Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov.