SLOVAKIA: Voters look set to oust the centre-right government in favour of a left-wing, pro-European party that promises to tax the rich

Record ID: 327731

  • Title: SLOVAKIA: Voters look set to oust the centre-right government in favour of a left-wing, pro-European party that promises to tax the rich
  • Date: 11th March 2012
  • Summary: BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA (MARCH 10, 2012) (REUTERS) BRATISLAVA CENTRE DAMAGED ELECTION POSTER WASTE BASKET ON THE STREET RENAMED AS "BALLOT BOX" PEOPLE PASSING ELECTION POSTER PEOPLE ENTERING THE POLL VARIOUS OF PEOPLE BEING SIGNED IN FOR THE ELECTIONS OLD WOMAN VOTING WOMAN CARRYING A DOG YOUNG WOMAN VOTING CAMERAMAN SLOVAK PRESIDENT IVAN GASPAROVIC WITH WIFE SILVIA ARRIVING TO VOTE SHAKING HANDS WITH ELECTION COMMITTEE MEMBERS VOTERS LIST IVAN GASPAROVIC WITH WIFE VOTING GASPAROVIC SPEAKING TO PRESS
  • Embargoed: 26th March 2012 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Slovakia, Slovakia
  • Country: Slovakia
  • Topics: Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA6IT2QHO3FOUHOJ9YYAQLBVQ9Z
  • Story Text: Leftist former prime minister Robert Fico is expected to win Slovakia's elections, held on Saturday (March 10), after promising to tax the rich and protect the poor in times of high unemployment and economic turmoil.
    His SMER party is expected to win 40 percent of the vote, knocking his reformist rival Mikulas Dzurinda's centre-right SDKU out of power.
    At the heart of the SDKU's likely electoral rout lies the leaking of a secret service file in December purporting to detail bugged conversations between top politicians and businessmen in which they allegedly discuss kickbacks in return for the sale of public companies in the mid-2000s.
    Details of the file, code named "Gorilla", have drawn tens of thousands of outraged Slovaks onto the streets in the past month in a rare display of public anger.
    On Friday, police used teargas to disperse a demonstration of around 200 people at the government's offices who threw eggs and shouted "Put the gorilla behind bars".
    Dzurinda and other SDKU officials have denied any allegations of corruption in the file.
    Slovak President Ivan Gasparovic criticised interest groups which he said had contributed to a national sense of unease prior to the elections.
    "We have to assess the "third sector", government, political parties, police, because all of them played their part in creating such an uneasy atmosphere before the elections. This is not good," he said at a polling station.
    "According to my opinion Smer (Fico party) will win. The preferences are clear, but who knows - will see," said one voter, who gave his name as Martin.
    "I wish that someone comes now who is fair, scrupulous and decent. But it is hard to find someone like that," said another voter, Miroslav Buda.
    Fico, who served one term as the central European country's prime minister in 2006-2010, plans to almost doubling a tax on bank deposits to 0.7 percent and raising the corporate tax to 22 percent, from 19 percent now.
    "No matter on who is going to set up the government, it should be government with the highest number of votes possible," Fico said after voting.
    "The government should be in any case pro-European one, because Slovakia is a country which still gets more from the EU than is giving and when the EU demonstrates its solidarity to us, it is our duty to pay back the solidarity to the EU."
    The election comes two years early, after an SDKU-led coalition government collapsed in acrimony last October when one of its junior members, the free-market SaS party, refused to back the expansion of the euro zone's bailout fund.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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