Slovakia's election - a change of government? New party SaS does well
June 13, 2010
Slovakia went to the polls yesterday, Saturday. The results suggest a possible change of government. The governing coalition of Prime Minister Fico is comfortably ahead with 34.8% of the vote and that the junior partner in the coalition, the SNS, or Slovak National Party would get 5.1%. The LS-HZDS, People's Party-Movement for a Democratic Slovakia, would get 4.3%, which is below the 5% threshold needed to get seats in Parliament. What these results could mean is that the opposition parties could form a coalition government in opposition to the current coalition. SDKU, Slovak Democratic and Christian Union party got 15.4% of the vote; SaS, the Freedom and Solidarity party got 12.1% of the vote; KDH, Christian Democratic Movement got 8.5%; Most-Hid, the ethnic Hungarian party, got 8.1%. That would seem a strange bunch of bed-fellows but politics is strange. (The voting systems in many parts of Europe tend to lead towards coalition governments, unlike those in the UK and America where some or other form of “first past the post” usually results in single-party government – the present coalition in the UK being the exception which proves the rule.)The most interesting results from this election in Slovakia are those for the SaS, which stands for Sloboda and Solidarity. This is a very young party which was established as recently as 2009 by Richard Sulik, the man who gave Slovakia its flat tax system. The flat tax system has been credited with a significant contribution to Slovakia's economic system since independence and since joining the EU. (Many people feel that the UK needs a flat tax system; during the Labour government's reign the tax codes went from one fairly large volume to two large volumes, incomprehensible to most and very expensive to operate.) The SaS are known to be Euro-sceptics, questioning the transparency of the workings of the EU; favour cuts in MPs' privileges; favour cuts in the number of MPs; favour liberalising drug laws; liberalising same-sex marriages. The party uses the latest technologies, such as Twitter and Facebook to get is message across. But could it govern?
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