Slovak anti-corruption centre-right party set to win election
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Slovak voters handed a resounding victory to the centre-right, anti-graft OLaNO opposition party in Saturday’s general election, dominated by an angry backlash over the 2018 murder of a journalist probing corruption in the eurozone state.
Outgoing Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini conceded defeat as partial official results showed OLaNO outpacing his populist-left Smer-SD by six percentage points.
“Congratulations to the election winner, good health, good luck,” Pellegrini told Matovic, adding “he has good marketing, but we will be interested in how he will handle his office.”
France 24 reports that OLaNO took 24.87 percent of the vote, ahead of 18.73 percent for the governing populist-left Smer-SD party, while the conservative We Are Family scored 8.34 percent, the liberal Freedom and Solidarity (SaS) won 5.67 percent and the fellow liberal “For the People” of ex-president Andrej Kiska mustered 5.43 percent of the vote, according to returns from 82.76 percent of polling stations.
Slovak Spectator
BBC reports that Slovakia’s opposition Ordinary People party is leading in parliamentary elections, with the results of just over half of districts counted. The party, led by anti-corruption campaigner Igor Matovic, has garnered a quarter of votes so far. The ruling centre-left Smer-SD party, which has dominated Slovak politics for a decade, is second with around 20%.
