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The Czech public and politicians followed the parliamentary elections in Slovakia very closely. Not only because Czechs and Slovaks share a common history, mutually understandable languages and cultural proximity, but also because an openly anti-Ukrainian trend could have prevailed in the neighbouring country. And the results there can also serve as an indicator of the direction in which social moods might evolve in the Czech Republic itself (although the parallels here are very tricky).
Robert Fico wins the elections. The comeback of a Slovak politician with a controversial past
What actually happened in Slovakia: former Prime Minister Robert Fico has experienced a major political comeback. He had to leave his post as prime minister in 2018, when Slovakia was rocked by the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová. For a short time, it looked like his political career was coming to an end after all the scandals he had survived - hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated against him in the streets of Bratislava, he had to resign, he ended up in the opposition, his Smer party split and he was eventually (temporarily) accused of setting up a criminal group. Despite this, he has now returned as the election winner with 23.6 percent of the votes and has a chance to form a government.
Fico has been in Slovak politics for over thirty years. He joined the Communist Party of Slovakia when he was 23 years old. After revolution, he has been a member of parliament since 1992. In 1999 he founded his own political party, Smer, in which he integrated several left-wing parties. He has repeatedly won elections and was Prime Minister of Slovakia from 2006-2010 and 2012-2018.
His reign has been marred by a series of corruption scandals, all of which he has endured. He resigned only after a series of mass protests following the mafia murder of a journalist and his fiancée. He has been in opposition ever since.
Fico and his former interior minister Robert Kaliňák were even charged with corruption and police abuse last year, but the prosecution was dropped by the prosecutor general's office.
In the current snap elections he decided to return to the scene, his campaign was very heated and aggressive, he was openly pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian. Among other things, he claimed that if he returned to power he would stop supplying arms to Ukraine.
In the end, his victory was more convincing than expected. President Zuzana Čaputová has already given him two weeks to try to form a government.
The pro-Western Czech leadership had a reserved response to Fico’s win
Fico is a politician who polarises Slovak society, but also the Czech political scene. It should be noted that relations between the Czech Republic and Slovakia are very close, and the two countries have traditionally been linked by a partnership since the division of Czechoslovakia in 1992 – Slovak statesmen are traditionally the first to visit the Czech Republic after taking office, and vice versa.
If Fico does indeed govern, relations between the two could now sour after a long time. The Czech Republic is ruled by a pro-Western coalition that strongly supports Ukraine. President Petr Pavel has the same orientation. It is clear from the demeanour of these politicians that they are not happy about Fico's victory.
President Pavel did not congratulate the winner of the Slovak elections, he did not comment publicly on the result of the Slovak elections, but before the elections, he had already clashed with Fico. In interviews, he warned that Fico's victory could jeopardise relations between the two countries. He pointed out that Fico's views often coincide with Russian propaganda. "Certainly, if he is elected and gains confidence, that would also undermine relations between us to some extent, because we would look at some fundamental things differently," Pavel said. This was then answered very sharply in a video by Fico, who described Pavel's statement as "bizarre".
Czech Prime Minister Petr Fiala was more restrained, merely wishing the Slovaks that "the post-election negotiations will lead to the formation of a good government". "I believe we will continue to work closely together at government level to the benefit of both our countries," he wrote on the social network X, without once mentioning Fico's name. Foreign Minister Jan Lipavský made a similar general comment.
Interior Minister Vít Rakušan explained his position more openly. "They say I am arrogant because I did not congratulate the winner of the Slovak elections. A politician should be a diplomat, but he must not be a hypocrite. I respect the decision of the Slovak (and any other) voters. I am ready for substantive cooperation with the new Slovak government, whoever forms it. But I will not turn a blind eye to the fact that the campaign that preceded the voters' decision was simply disgusting in places. And I do not support the view that the end justifies the means," he wrote. He has previously described the Slovak election result as a "warning".
With the disgusting campaign, Rkušan may have also alluded to the insults directed at President Zuzana Čaputová, whom Fico repeatedly referred to as an "American agent".
The atmosphere of their first post-election meeting is telling: it was very distant, not even a hint of a smile. Nevertheless, the president, who had sued Fico in court for his remarks, gave him 14 days for forming a government.
It is not impossible that he will succeed. The key will be which side the Hlas-SD party leans towards. It is led by Peter Pellegrini, who left Fico's Smer party three years ago with ten MPs and founded his own party. There are two basic options: either he joins Fico and the nationalists or the liberal Progresivne Slovensko and the Christian Democrats.
Fico’s Czech supporters are, all, pro-Russian
On the other hand, there are also politicians who welcome Fico's victory - among the influential ones are Andrej Babiš and his ANO movement, the strongest opposition politician in the Czech Republic. Babiš cannot be said to be pro-Russian - his movement is rather populist and has no clear values or political anchor. It has moved from rather liberal and centrist positions to left-wing politics over the course of a decade, and more recently to nationalist and conservative positions in the style of Viktor Orbán.
Before the elections, Babiš, who is originally from Slovakia, warned Slovaks against voting for Progresivne Slovensko, Fico's main rival.
Fico's victory was also welcomed by another opposition movement, the SPD, which has long had a pro-Russian profile. In its reaction to the elections, it also stressed that "Slovaks have clearly preferred with their votes those political forces that have in their programme the defence of national interests, reject the current EU policy and also the further sending of weapons to Ukraine".
Fico found strong support in former presidents Václav Klaus and Miloš Zeman. Both have long held strongly pro-Russian positions, and Zeman is a long-time ally of Fico. As for Russia, Zeman completely reversed himself in his public statements after the invasion on 24 February, calling for the strongest possible support for Ukraine and punishing the aggressor. He has now emphasised this in relation to Fico. "Although I support Fico, we differ in our view of NATO. There is still trauma in me from the occupation in 1968. That is why I am on the side of the invaded country, i.e. on the side of Ukraine," Zeman said after the Slovak elections.
Moscow’s dilemma: what to do after it said that the Americans would rig the elections, yet the pro-Russians won?
Who Russia supports, there can be no doubt. The director of the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR), Sergei Naryshkin, unprecedentedly intervened in the election just two days before the vote. He issued a statement on the SVR website entitled "The US and the Slovak elections". In it, he accused the United States of interfering in the country's internal political situation. He described the Progresivne Slovensko party as a 'protégé' of the US, which, if successful, would form a 'cabinet fully loyal to Washington'. The head of the Russian secret service thus attacked the party which, according to pre-election polls, was vying with Fico's Smer for first place and which finally finished second.
"In general, the message of the American curators to their European charges is as simple as usual, and for some it even resembles the calls of the leaders of the Third Reich - to throw off the chimera of morality and use any means to achieve the desired result. Given these facts, the upcoming elections in Slovakia can hardly be seen as a democratic expression of the will of the people without outside influence," Naryškin added.
As we know, the openly pro-Russian Fico won the election and is likely to govern. How this fits with the alleged American rigging of the election is hard to say.
