Robert Fico is top of the polls ahead of the upcoming elections in Slovakia. The three-time prime minister left office in 2018 at the height of protests following the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his companion Martina Kušnírová. In the fallout of the murder, Fico was driven out by a crowd of many thousands, as well as his coalition partner, the Hungarian-minority party Most/Híd.

Fico’s Smer party, self-characterised as rural social democracy, was defeated in the subsequent elections in 2020. It entered opposition after more than a decade of almost uninterrupted rule.

It looked like the eclipse of a major figure in Slovak politics. But three years on, anyone who has taken a brief interest in Slovak politics must wonder what has happened. Previously flushed out by the crowd, dismissed by his partners, and rejected at the polls, Fico is returning through the front door.

He may soon form a government that could emulate Orbán‘s Hungary. Fascists may well sit in a Fico government, as in Finland, or offer their external support, as in Sweden.

Micromanaging the polycrisis

When the citizens of Slovakia went to the polls in February 2020, the pandemic was just a footnote. The debate was dominated by the investigation into the 2018 murder of the journalist and his partner which had revealed an intricate web of connections. The common impression was that of a state rotten to the core.

Igor Matovič‘s anti-corruption movement (OĽaNO) succeeded thanks to its most spectacular grasp of this wave of exasperation. Wearing “Anti-mafia patrol” jackets and “Fico protects thieves” T-shirts, OĽaNO presented the situation as a popular uprising against the corrupt elite represented by Smer. The name of Matovič’s party, Ordinary People and Independent Personas, was well chosen. 

Matovič and his friends were able influencers who harnessed popular discontent. But his party remained a loose association of supporters and local personalities without structures or a serious programme. During the management of the pandemic, Matovič concentrated on what he was good at. He spent hours at press conferences walking the audience through health measures and arguing with opponents on the web, including his coalition partner and the head of the national pharmaceutical authority.

Those voters who had been disappointed by the abrupt fall of Iveta Radičová‘s centre-right government in 2012 and subsequent years of uninterrupted Smer rule, projected hope onto Matovič out of necessity. They expected that, as well as tackling corruption, his government would see through necessary reforms.

Mikuláš Dzurinda and Ivan Mikloš, the leaders of the formerly powerful centre-right SDKÚ party, accepted Matovič as their heir. But soon, they too warned that Matovič was not in control of the government and that he was playing and micromanaging. They criticised him for his utter inability to cooperate, divisiveness, and obsessive nature.

President Zuzana Čaputová summed it up nicely, “As the whole world dealt with Covid, we dealt with the prime minister.”

Matovič was eventually forced to resign from the prime minister‘s post after taking the personal initiative to order the Russian-developed Sputnik vaccine. Pursued without proper consultation or process, this stunt seriously disrupted the official roll-out of EU-approved vaccines and undermined the trust of his coalition partners. Eduard Heger, also from the OĽaNO anti-corruption party, took over as prime minister.

After his resignation, Matovič moved to the Ministry of Finance and sought to reinvent himself as a conservative politician. He concentrated on pushing the “family package“, a child benefits programme inspired by Poland, doing so without respect for the coalition programme, legislative procedures, or the state budget.

After the liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) dropped out of the governing coalition as a result, Matovič turned to the far right for support, relying on votes from fascist members of parliament elected on the list of Marián Kotleba, a controversial figure previously convicted for the use of neo-Nazi symbols.

Do you remember Belgrade?

The departure of the Liberals from Heger’s government brought its end closer. However, Heger hung on as long as he could bear. First leading a minority government thanks to fascist votes, then without confidence. In the end, he was left almost without ministers.

The weaker and more indecisive Heger was at home, the stronger the image he projected abroad. After the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, Slovakia sided with those countries who willingly helped with war refugees and arms shipments.

The opposition, however, quickly recalled the foreign policy of Mikuláš Dzurinda who in 1999 had opened the skies for NATO fighter jets to fly over Belgrade. It framed the aid to Ukraine as undermining peace for the sake of US interests.

It has never been difficult to whip up anti-American tones in Slovakia. It is a legacy of the Cold War. At the same time, since well before the annexation of Crimea in 2014, the Kremlin has consistently taken care to maintain a pro-Russian thought infrastructure in the public space of post-socialist countries.

A significant part of Slovaks saw the invasion of Ukraine through the eyes of the Kremlin. After more than a year of war, 34 per cent blame the collective West and 17 per cent even blame Ukraine (Globsec, May 2023). 

The opposition used pro-Russian narratives to argue for the protection of Slovak interests against American adventurism. Moreover, they presented the government‘s interest in Ukrainian affairs as a lack of interest in Slovak ones.

The opposition presented pro-Russian narratives as a way to protect the interests of Slovakia against American adventurism.

Prime Minister Heger fought the energy crisis and the need to cut Slovakia’s dependence on Russian fossil fuels quite bravely. The dispatch of Mig-21 fighter jets was also a success – Slovakia was among the first countries to supply Ukraine with aircraft – but the decision suffered from the lack of legitimacy of Heger‘s cabinet, which ruled with neither confidence nor the president’s backing.

President Zuzana Čaputová allowed the lame-duck Heger government to exist until May 2023, eventually replacing it with her own cabinet. The impression of chaos and lack of legitimacy, reflected in historically low polling numbers, was only deepened by the election date being set for the end of September, nine months after the fall of the Heger government.

Who’s looking after us?

This timing allowed the opposition to spread a narrative that claimed that elections had been postponed so Slovakia could keep on sending weapons to Ukraine against the will of its citizens. Half of those polled at the end of July this year opposed sending weapons to their neighbours. Robert Fico committed to “not send even one bullet more”.

Slovakia had a strong arms production sector throughout the socialist era. The closure of these industries was an important driver of Slovak nationalism around the time of the division of Czechoslovakia in the early 1990s. Unemployment grew and was a trauma for many. The idea that the state was not there to take care of its people was new and disturbing.

Robert Fico inherited this electorate. But though he mourned the arms factories, he did not welcome the revival of production that came with the war in Ukraine.

On the contrary, he blamed both Heger‘s and the president’s caretaker government for the arms race and the threat to world peace. A Globsec poll in May this year showed that as many as 69 per cent of Slovaks saw military support to Ukraine as a provocation against Russia, compared with 57 per cent who agreed that it was aid to a country defending itself (the groups clearly overlap).

As with the war in the former Yugoslavia, Fico could count on historic pan-Slavic sentiment, which still permeates memory and textbooks, that motivates many Slovaks to reject, at least to some extent, the clear line between aggressor and victim. They would rather excuse the aggressor or look for an external director of the battle between Slavs. (This is where Americans come in handy.)

Fico’s opposition deployed the popular idea that whenever the government helps minorities or foreigners, it is at the expense of the majority. Thus, they could delegitimise aid to Ukraine as sucking the deserved attention away from Slovak citizens. As the broad masses suffer from high inflation and fear further crises in the near future, they have no problem believing that the government has stopped caring about them because it is attending to Ukraine.

Shortly after the split of the Smer party into two rival strands of social democracy, Robert Fico added the adjective “Slovak” to the name of his party. In this way, he has defined himself against European social democracy, which, in his view, cares about the rights of minorities and foreigners while neglecting “working folk”. This criticism preceded his electoral defeat and the party‘s disintegration, but now he can make the most of it in the battle for the nationalist and fascist electorate.

The failed renewal of social democracy

After the elections of 2020, Smer disintegrated into two parties. Peter Pellegrini was prime minister for Smer after Robert Fico’s resignation. Pellegrini offered voters a way to have social democracy without Fico‘s toxicity. He thus won over a more moderate electorate. In contrast, Smer, pared down to loyalists around Robert Fico, further radicalised.

In line with the growing global trend towards ultra-conservative identity politics, Smer also adapted and added to this formula by questioning Western alliances. Although the party has always rejected withdrawal from the EU and NATO, its members consistently undermined the reputation of these organisations.

In line with the growing global trend towards ultra-conservative identity politics, Smer also adapted and added to this formula by questioning Western alliances.

At the same time, Smer must have noticed that, according to a recent Globsec poll, up to 33 per cent of those surveyed would agree with leaving NATO. To cater to people unhappy with recent EU developments – including military assistance to Ukraine – Fico promised to insist on keeping Slovakia’s veto. Fico clearly wants to wield the same blocking power as Viktor Orbán. 

Ever since Peter Pellegrini took over the prime minister‘s chair from Fico, he has shown a willingness to renew Smer and rid it of its bad reputation. After the break with Smer, Pellegrini spoke of the need for a government of reconciliation. His ambition was to bring together both pro-Smer and anti-Smer audiences to bridge the long-time irreconcilable divide.

Pellegrini’s reformed social democracy led the polls up to January this year. Pellegrini‘s good manners and moderation seemed to be widely appreciated by voters. However, his offer of reconciliation has not been listened to by his political partners.

Potential allies took more notice of his origins in the Smer party and suspected his party Hlas of being a vehicle for the continued safe existence of people who should be held accountable for their years of governing Slovakia.

Robert Fico did not ask for amnesty and did not talk about a reboot. Instead, he relied on a tough and systematic battle with the government and the president. He has told the public a story in which he was the victim of a kind of Maidan and now his people are the instigators of political trials.

As not only governing politicians but also the police leadership itself talked passionately about cleansing the country of robbers and corrupters, with investigations unfolding under spectacular names like The Storm, Purgatory, Twilight, and Ezekiel 7, Fico’s story was plausible to some.

The formerly establishment party Smer had learned a lot of new things from the conspiracy and far-right scene to which it had begun to adapt. This adventure had a two-fold effect: this milieu offered a plethora of scenarios for political alibis as well as a convenient pool of voters. However, it seemed that such a radicalised Smer would remain isolated and find a partner only in fascist parties. 

In the meantime, reformed Pellegrini was showing that he was the legitimate heir of social democracy in Slovakia. But even as he met with leaders across Europe, he failed to convince possible domestic partners that they should talk to him about future cooperation. He was told that he may be accepted in salons, but at home, he is just a thief and a liar, who surely longs to return to Fico.

Refused by his new partners and pressed by Robert Fico, Hlas lost ground (it is now third in the polls). The likelihood of a coalition without Smer is shrinking.

Escape from the periphery

The centrist liberal Progresívne Slovensko (PS) is second in the polls. It has postponed any indication about whether working with Pellegrini‘s Hlas is acceptable or not until mid-September. After its previous failure in the parliamentary elections, PS is utterly cautious.

This party gave Slovakia its first female president, Zuzana Čaputová, a two-time mayor of Bratislava, and won the European elections in 2019. But its 2020 parliamentary election results were disastrous, falling short of the 7-per-cent threshold for coalitions by less than a thousand votes.

In the 2020 campaign, PS had concentrated on forming a large centrist bloc and made an electoral pact with the traditional Christian Democratic Party. However, the alliance failed to draw in further centrist allies and thus fell below the threshold. The Christian Democrats, blamed by their voters for the premature compromise with the PS liberals, also dropped out of parliament.

In the end, the government was made up of the victorious movement of Igor Matovič and three other parties whose leaders represent those entrepreneurs socialised in the 1990s. Despite all the downsides of the early transition to capitalism, these forces managed to fulfill the voters’ desire for non-politicians to clean up after corrupt politicians. In the current campaign, on the contrary, we hear a demand for classic politicians, with experience and stability, in a reckoning with the Igor Matovič era.

Most recently, the protests after the murder of a journalist and his companion proved that Slovak society can produce a strong call for change.

Most recently, the protests after the murder of a journalist and his companion proved that Slovak society can produce a strong call for change. But rather than mass mobilisation, the camp that does not want Robert Fico’s return is today talking about emigration in the event of an unfavourable election result.

The departure of young people abroad thanks to open borders is shaping most post-socialist countries. Slovakia is specific in how easy it is to leave. Neighbouring Czech Republic (with which Slovakia has no language barrier) but also Austria benefit from this outflow. The generation gap between the smart and educated who leave and the cautious, older and less mobile is widening and translating into politics.

Demographics was a major issue before the 2016 election, but it was about the rejection of refugees from Middle Eastern and African countries. Since then, there has been growing talk about the emigration of Slovaks and its impact on a country where one in five university students studies abroad and a significant proportion of them settle. Slovakia is thus literally fighting for its own citizens and against relegation to the EU periphery.

Despite these pressures, the promise of Ukraine‘s integration into the EU and the new importance of NATO‘s eastern wing for European defence is nevertheless moving Slovakia towards Europe’s centre, both geographically and security-wise. By helping Ukraine and passing on its experience with integration to promising new candidates for membership, Slovakia grows more attractive not only for people from accession and candidate countries – Slovakia already hosts significant numbers of Ukrainian refugees – but also for its own citizens.

It won‘t work without compromise

The state of education and healthcare are mentioned as a priority in every campaign, but real solutions are in short supply.

Since the revolution in 1989, a significant part of the Slovak countryside has complained about the disintegration of its infrastructure. Bus lines, kindergartens, and even grocery stores have closed. The call for a “strong state”, still heard in the campaigns of both social democratic and fascist parties, is a response to the confluence of current crises but also public services’ long-term decline.

Fico’s return will mean the reversal of the cleansing of the state, the pursuit of revenge against those who sought it, and an end to Orbán’s loneliness.

For a long time, the decline was hardest felt in areas where big industries and agriculture had left, new investors had not arrived, and the population was left dependent on precarious work. Now the lack of outpatient care has come to the big cities as well. The absence of a highway link between the two largest cities and an abandoned construction site where a planned large hospital has not sprouted are monuments to a weak state and the decline of services for all.

The green economy and digitalisation are distant promises, while Slovakia lacks the basic infrastructure projects to prove that the state works. Ironically, decades of Smer rule have failed to deliver this, despite rhetorical invocations of a strong state. Matovič‘s governments could have at least laid the foundations thanks to the Recovery and Resilience Plan, but, as in the case of the state hospital, they failed to do so.

All parties – except perhaps the fascists – are aware of these challenges. Pellegrini‘s Hlas built its existence on the premise that the country needed a new vision, but one where modernisation was done with social standards in mind. They could implement this programme in government with the PS and possibly the parties of the former coalition. However, these potential partners, alarmed that voters would not understand cooperation with the heirs of the Smer party, did not publicly accept his offer.

Smer is succeeding in discouraging the voters of the Hlas party from thinking about a government with the parties of the former coalition and the PS. It offers as an example not only the experience of governing over the past three years but also the political ineptitude of President Čaputová, who came out of the PS party.

The PS party is too worried about a repeat of the situation from the last elections when they were already talking about nominations for ministers and then failed to get into parliament. They are therefore overly cautious.

Other voices from the anti-Fico camp are being smashed into smaller parties that may not make it into parliament at all.

After the experience of Matovič in power, all parties exclude cooperation with his movement. Matovič returns the refusal in his particular way: he will only enter coalition under the condition that his latest idea will be accepted – a bonus of 500 euros for everyone who comes out to vote.

With this condition, which none of the partners wants to meet and which is unenforceable, Matovič reminds us who bears the greatest responsibility for the return of Robert Fico.

Fico’s return will mean the reversal of the cleansing of the state, the pursuit of revenge against those who sought it, and an end to Orbán’s loneliness.

Thank you, Igor Matovič.