Municipal and regional governments passed the stress tests

After a litany of national crises, voters backed the local incumbents.

Joint municipal and regional elections in Slovakia, October 29, 2022. Joint municipal and regional elections in Slovakia, October 29, 2022. (Source: TASR)

Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Residents of Slovak towns and villages elected their representatives. Extremists did not prevail. Mayor Vallo is returned by a landslide in Bratislava. Two peculiar referendums took place elsewhere.

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Election results dispelled the worst fears

Many had concerns ahead of what was very likely the most wide-ranging set of elections that people in Slovakia have ever participated in. In the run-up, it came to seem that democracy had rarely had it harder.

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Saturday’s local and municipal elections – for which voting is only allowed in person, in the place of one’s residence – took place in the middle of the autumn school holidays, when people typically travel away from their homes. Election day was noticeably shorter than usual, with polling stations closing at 20:00. Voters had to deal with four, and in Bratislava and Košice cities as many as six, different ballots. And – a circumstance not to be overlooked – it was the first time that voters have been asked to deliver an electoral verdict since the 2020 election, which was followed by a lot of perceived and actual hardship during the pandemic, and a lot of political turmoil since that has left many people drained of any enthusiasm for politics and even for public affairs as such.

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How many would turn out to vote, and how many of them would not mind or – worse – would actively rejoice if public office were entrusted to candidates from the fascist, far-right, and anti-systemic forces of whom there were a plethora of candidates? The results, though impossible to directly translate into national-level politics, provide some satisfaction for now.

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