LEFTIST parties are pledging to unite before the next parliamentary elections.
The Slovak daily SME wrote that the leaders of the parliamentary opposition party Smer and the non-parliamentary parties the Democratic Left Party, the Social Democratic Alternative, the Social Democratic Party of Slovakia, and the Left Bloc have announced a plan to join before the 2006 elections so that "not a single left-wing vote is lost".
The exact form of the cooperation, however, still remains unclear. While Robert Fico, the leader of Smer, said that the parties should run as a single centre-left party, the chairmen of the other parties said the idea still has to be discussed.
