Prime Minister Robert Fico's social-democratic Smer party has won the parliamentary elections with 28.2% of votes, less than he expected and his party is now searching for coalition partners among the seven other parties that made it to Parliament. "As winners we will attempt to form the new Government. It will not be an easy job but we will do all we can to prevent early elections and any experiments that would endanger parliamentary democracy," said Fico, hinting at the fact that the far right party Ľudová strana Naše Slovensko will have 14 MPs in an institution which they despise. It's the first time when the Slovak far right has made it to Parliament. "„We have expected such a result based on the information we had from anonymous online surveys. All other parties say they do not want to cooperate with us but we do not want to trade our party's values either. We want to promote our policies in the Parliament. We are not fascists or neo-Nazi," said Milan Uhrik a spokesperson for the party. They gathered 8% of votes, finishing on fifth place, only a whisker from the Slovak National Party which returns to top politics under a new leader, Andrej Danko, who led a campaign focused on a strong state rather than blaming ethnic Hungarians for all the bad things happening in the country as his predecessor used to do. They were rewarded with 8.6% of all votes.
Liberals forming the Freedom and Solidarity Party celebrated not only reaching second place but also a better than expected result of 12.1% of the votes. "We are ready to form a Government. We have proved that we are a serious party which has been here for seven years already," stated their leader Richard Sulík who is also an MEP. The alliance of "Ordinary citizens" and NOVA came third on 11%, sending to Parliament anti-corruption activists as well as a former justice and interior minister. Then a political entity appearing out of nowhere and led by a businessman, Boris Kollár, gathered 6.6% of votes ahead of two more experienced parties Most-Hid (6.5%) and Siet (5.6%) which had been the favour of opinion polls as the best performer on the right political spectrum. Its leader, Radoslav Prochazka, did not hide his disappointment and Most-Hid's president Béla Bugár's mood was not upbeat either. "The dreams of a reformist pro-European Government who will fight against corruption are over," said Bugár adding that early elections are still a possibility.
The far right, who still has yet to comment on the results, is not the only one writing history in this elections; one of the oldest parties still active on the Slovak political scene, the Christian-Democrats will not have any MP for the first time ever. Its leader, Jan Figel' called for an extraordinary party meeting to analyse the results. The turnover of Saturday elections was 59.8%
