For this upwardly mobile Central European country, still in its gawky adolescence as an independent state, this spring should have been a proud coming of age.
Slovakia was admitted to NATO this month, after a delay of several years. On May 1, it will join the EU, along with Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and six other countries. But a ghost from its political past has reappeared, casting a pall over the celebration and reminding Slovaks of the intractable pull of history.
Vladimir Meciar, the autocratic former prime minister who led Slovakia after its split with the Czech Republic in 1993, has unexpectedly become the favorite to be the country's next president. On April 3, he won the first round of an election while the candidate of the governing party failed to attract enough votes to qualify for a runoff election on April 17, which sets up Meciar for a victory.
Meciar, a hulking former boxer with a charismatic speaking style, turned his country into a near pariah state in the mid-1990s with his virulent nationalism and trampling of human rights.
Crony capitalism rotted the economy, driving away foreign investors and leaving Slovakia impoverished.
Disaster
"This is a disaster for our country's image," said Grigorij Meseznikov, the president of the Institute for Public Affairs, an independent research organization in Bratislava, the capital. "He represents people who are anti-capitalist, isolationist and nostalgic for the past. He's not a politician of the future."
Monica Benova, a member of Parliament from a leftist populist party, likens Meciar, 61, to Kurt Waldheim, the former president of Austria, whose past as a Nazi officer, and his subsequent amnesia about it, consigned his country to a political purgatory while he was in office.
"How can we be sure he won't abuse the powers of his office, like he did the last time?" Benova asked. "He's trying to sound different, but it's just a mask. He's still the same person."
Meciar won 32.7 percent of the vote in the first round. In a surprise attributed to a low voter turnout, the governing coalition's candidate, Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan, finished third, narrowly beaten by a former close associate of Meciar's, Ivan Gasparovic. The runoff, commentators here say, is a choice between two evils. Meciar declined a request for an interview.
In Slovakia, as in Austria, the presidency is mostly a ceremonial job. The president can hold up legislation passed by the parliament, which can override his veto. While he appoints ambassadors and senior military officers, he is supposed to stick to the prime minister's recommendations.
As head of state, however, Meciar would be a symbol. It is a role he would no doubt relish, having virtually personified Slovakia's birth as a nation.
In one of history's wrinkles, the current Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, was the prime minister with whom Meciar negotiated the Czechoslovakian divorce.
Euroskeptics
Now the two leaders, each known for his bruising manner and deep skepticism about Europe, may find themselves together on a dais, celebrating the integration of their sister lands into Europe.
It is unlikely, however, that Meciar will be invited to the White House. The US is inclined to spurn him, said a Western diplomat here, who spoke anonymously as is standard practice when dealing with such issues.
European leaders may do likewise, although the diplomat predicted that the EU would not impose sanctions, as it did on Austria after the party of the right-wing leader, Joerg Haider, joined its government.
"Brussels recognizes that the sanctions on Austria backfired," the diplomat said. "The Slovakia of 2004 is also not the Slovakia of the mid-1990s."
Still, for a minority of Slovaks who live in the isolated, rural east, Europe looms as a threat. They fear that Slovakia, overshadowed for centuries by the more prosperous Czechs, will be swallowed up in a vast union -- its 5.4 million people a drop in an ocean of the union's 450 million.
Meciar speaks to these disenfranchised people. They vote reliably for his party, ignoring accusations that he profited from the sale of state companies, or that he was involved in the kidnapping of the son of a former Slovak president in 1995, or even that Slovakia was rebuffed in the first round of NATO expansion because of Western distaste for his rule.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not