Smer leader Robert Fico pictured in parliament on September 14, 2022. (source: TASR - Jakub Kotian)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. The final week of the election campaign is upon us. Military intelligence officials face charges, with a €26,000 bottle of whisky in the mix. The Ukraine grain ban thriller. What does the new Covid wave look like?
You can expect to receive the next edition of Last Week in Slovakia, updating you with the new election results, next Sunday morning (October 1).
Election debates are not what they used to be
One week from now, Slovakia’s citizens will have done their part in answering the question of where the country should be headed from this autumn. But first, the politicians will talk.
Despite the fact that much of the election campaign now takes place outside the realm of traditional media – in Slovakia’s case, it’s mostly on Facebook – the upcoming televised debates are seen as the last chance for parties to capture the attention of undecided voters, or even tilt the opinion of those who are leaning towards other candidates. In Slovakia, the final round of debates takes place just before the legal moratorium on reporting kicks in – at midnight on Wednesday.
Until recently, politicians tended to view participation in the debates as an opportunity. But this, too, has changed. The Smer party, which has led opinion polls for most of this year, declared early on in the campaign that it would not communicate with certain media. Smer was not, however, ruling out Slovakia’s numerous disinformation channels – quite the contrary. Prominent Smer candidates, including the leader of the party Robert Fico, have willingly appeared in such dark corners of the internet as the YouTube channel of a prominent Slovak anti-Semite, thought to be based in London, who is currently being sought by police on criminal charges.
