Slovaks yesterday voted in a general election, with the governing populists fighting for survival amid outrage over the 2018 gangland-style murder of a journalist whose stories exposed high-level corruption plaguing the eurozone country.
Allegedly a hit ordered by a businessman with connections to politicians, the killing of Jan Kuciak, which also took the life of his fiancee, Martina Kusnirova, has become a lightning rod for public outrage at graft in public life.
Hit hard by the fallout of the murder, most surveys suggested that former Slovak prime minister Robert Fico’s governing populist-left Smer-Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party was running neck-and-neck with OLaNO, a surging center-right opposition party focused on rooting out corruption.
Photo: AFP
OLaNO even outpaced Smer-SD by 3.5 percent in a last-minute AKO/Focus agency opinion survey published this week in the neighboring Czech Republic to bypass a pre-election polling ban in Slovakia.
“Change is much needed here,” said Daniela Jonasova, a 35-year-old office clerk, who told reporters that she voted for OLaNO at a Bratislava polling station shortly after it opened.
“I like the way [OLaNO leader Igor] Matovic points out what is wrong in Slovakia — I believe he’ll bring a real change,” she added, referring to OLaNO’s anti-graft focus.
“The election is primarily about the desire for decency in politics,” Bratislava-based political analyst Radoslav Stefancik said.
“Instead of protesting against the ruling Smer-SD party on the streets, people will do so in polling stations,” Stefancik said.
The double murder triggered the largest anti-government protests since communist times and toppled Fico as prime minister, with his party colleague Peter Pellegrini taking over the reins.
It also propelled Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, a liberal lawyer and anti-graft advocate, out of nowhere to win last year’s presidential race in the country of 5.4 million people.
The double murder “has reconfigured the entire political scene, as new liberal-democratic parties emerged and immediately gained support, political analyst Grigorij Meseznikov said.
“The most likely scenario is the creation of a center-right pro-democracy oriented government coalition of six or even seven parties,” he added.
Having vowed to immediately push through anti-corruption measures should he win office, OLaNO leader Matovic, a 46-year-old lawmaker, appeared to have galvanized voter outrage over the murders and the high-level corruption they exposed.
An eccentric self-made millionaire and former media boss, Matovic set up “Ordinary People and Independent Personalities — OLaNO” a decade ago.
Analysts suggested that the media savvy, but unpredictable politician could become prime minister if he manages to unify the splintered opposition.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion