Subject: Postmark Prague: Slovak Election Results
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 10:54:31 -0400
RedNet News
News and Views from the Communist Press
Fw: SLOVAK ELECTION RESULTS (POSTMARK PRAGUE NEWS RELEASE)
From Ken Biggs, 23/09/02 23:24:13
---------------------------------------------------
POSTMARK PRAGUE No.372
Sunday 22 September 2002
COMMUNISTS WIN 11 SEATS IN SLOVAK ELECTION
For the first time since 1989 the Slovak parliament will include Communist MPs.
The Communist Party of Slovakia (KSS) won 11seats at this weekend's elections to the 150-member National Council. It more than doubled its support at the last election in 1998, polling 6.2% of the vote.
Saturday's election also saw the pro-NATO, pro-EU Democratic Left Party (SDL) lose all of its 23 seats. Its 1998 vote of 14.7% slumped to less than 3%. Its membership of the outgoing "right-left" coalition government of premier Mikulas Dzurinda cost it dear and led to many of its MPs deserting the party well before the election to form new parties. These fared very little better.
Former SDL leader Peter Weiss's Social Democratic Alternative polled less than 2%, while ex-SDL MP Robert Fico's new party Smer (13.5%) finished
third behind Vladimir Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (19.5%) and Dzurinda's Slovak Democratic and Christian Union (15.09%).
The vote of Meciar's party was well-down (from 27% in 1998) following a split in its ranks and US, NATO and EU threats to slam the door in Slovakia's face if Meciar won the election, even though the party upports
Slovak membership of both NATO and the EU.
The next Slovak coalition government will probably be made up of four right-wing parties -- apart from Dzurinda's party, the Christian Democratic
Movement (8.25%), a new party formed by Berlusconi-like media magnate Pavol Rusko, the New Citizen Alliance (8%) -- and the Hungarian Coalition Party
(11.6%). Together they scraped together 78 of the 150 seats contested at the weekend. This compares with the previous "right-left" coalition's 93 seats.
Do you Yahoo!?
New DSL Internet Access from SBC & Yahoo!
