2023 parliamentary election, page 5

The 2023 early parliamentary election was held in Slovakia on Saturday, September 30. Most public opinion polls indicated that the populist Smer party, led by three-time former prime minister Robert Fico, would come first. Smer left office in 2020, after eight years in power, following the surprise victory in that year’s parliamentary election of the self-proclaimed anti-corruption movement OĽaNO. Most of the other political parties in Slovakia’s fragmented political scene tried to stop Smer, a party under which organised crime thrived, from returning to government. Based on the official results, Smer needs to find coalition partners in order to form a government. Whether Fico, who expresses openly pro-Russian opinions and has lately grown increasingly close to Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán, will be able to do this remains to be seen.