The conflict within Smer-SD is already out in the open, and party members seem to have different opinions on it, Smer vice-chair and former PM Peter Pellegrini stated on Sunday, speaking on television channel Markiza's Sunday politics show. A few days ago, Pellegrini called on the party's founder and long-time chair Robert Fico to step down from the position. On Sunday, Pellegrini did not rule out the possibility that he could end up leaving the party. However, he noted at the same time that he thinks that the fairest solution would be to let Smer supporters choose which kind of politics they want see from the party in the future. If Pellegrini had set up his own party and a general election had taken place in mid-May, the new entity would have garnered 21.4 percent of the votes, while Smer-SD would have been placed third on 9.6 percent, a poll carried out by Focus agency on behalf of television channel Markíza showed on Sunday.
The fact that Peter Pellegrini did not wait for a Smer-SD congress and called on Robert Fico to leave the helm of the party indicates that he has probably decided to leave Smer himself, analyst Juraj Hrabko told TABLET.TV. "He's still living off the general election result, the number of preferential votes he obtained and the fact that he's the ex-premier," explained Hrabko. The analyst is of the opinion that Fico lowered the impact of Pellegrini's call by simply not reacting to it head on and remaining reticent.
