SLOVAKIA: Voting gets underway in elections, likely to bring leftist Robert Fico back to power on a pledge to tax the rich and better protect the working class in times of high unemployment and economic turmoil
Record ID:
830848
SLOVAKIA: Voting gets underway in elections, likely to bring leftist Robert Fico back to power on a pledge to tax the rich and better protect the working class in times of high unemployment and economic turmoil
- Title: SLOVAKIA: Voting gets underway in elections, likely to bring leftist Robert Fico back to power on a pledge to tax the rich and better protect the working class in times of high unemployment and economic turmoil
- Date: 11th March 2012
- Summary: BRATISLAVA, SLOVAKIA (MARCH 10, 2012) (REUTERS) TRAMS IN SQUARE
- Embargoed: 26th March 2012 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: Slovakia, Slovakia
- Country: Slovakia
- Topics: Politics
- Reuters ID: LVADA2WO82JGOE16KST2ZB6Q4NFR
- Story Text: Slovaks went to the polls on Satruday (March 10) to vote in elections expected bring leftist former prime minister Robert Fico back to power.
He has promised to tax the rich and protect the working class from the effects of current high unemployment and economic turmoil.
Fico has been predicted to win 40 percent of the vote, potentially knocking his reformist rival Mikulas Dzurinda's centre-right SDKU out of power.
A government led by Fico's centre-left, pro-European Smer party would be welcomed by Slovakia's euro zone partners who were upset by the outgoing coalition's refusal to contribute to the first bailout of Greece and holding up strengthening the rescue fund.
However, many Slovak voters, disillusioned by political corruption scandals, are expected to stay away from the ballot box and polls show turnout may fall to a record low 44 percent.
One vote, technican Tomas Rigel, who indicated that he was likely to vote for a rightwing party, said: "There have been a lot of scandals here, the country was stolen - not good situation."
Fico says he plans to use tax hikes to maintain welfare and cut the budget deficit, and continue the outgoing cabinet's effort to protect the country's sovereign credit ratings.
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.
He has also criticised labour reforms under the previous centre-right government that have made it easier to hire and fire workers, striking a chord among voters afraid of job insecurity in a nation where 13.7 percent of the population of working age are out of a job.
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.
At the heart of the SDKU's likely electoral rout, however, 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".
Pensioner Emil Rabek said the kickbacks issue had to be addressed as a priority. "The situation cannot change just like that until the protests are over. Specialists and experts should be employed and politicians should care about politics," Rabek said.
Dzurinda and other SDKU officials have denied any allegations of corruption in the file. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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