Slovaks shocked by first round presidential election results
Last Sunday morning the Slovak nation woke up to breaking news. Vladimir Meciar won the first round of presidential poll with slightly over a third of the votes. The second was his former deputy Ivan Gasparovic. Eduard Kukan the favourite of opinion polls and political analysts was third - missing a place in the second round by only 0.19 percent. The former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar was obviously pleased by his performance.
"It's interesting that I managed to steal Mr. Kukan's place in the second round. I didn't expect it though. I don't see myself a favourite in the second round but you never know."
In the government camp, spirits were low. Eduard Kukan said he was very disappointed but would accept the will of the people. Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda had trouble believing he would have to deal with a populist president coming from the opposition. Even though the president has a rather symbolic role in Slovakia, he is asked to sign bills approved by Parliament. Dzurinda's government has already lost the majority in Parliament and many analysts fear that the new president may refuse to sign laws returning them to the legislative body and slowing down the whole process of reforming. Actually postponing reforms was Meciar's main activity during the three times he was prime minister between 1993 and 1998. At that time he was accused of everything from isolating the country to corruption and initiating the kidnap of the president's son. But many voices in the ruling coalition point to the fact that its leaders had made a tactical mistake that helped Meciar in the end. Bela Bugar, the president of Ethnic Hungarians' party.
"Our mistake is that we couldn't agree on only one candidate representing the coalition. We managed to divide the votes among two candidates. Unfortunately, this is the local political culture. And we managed to indirectly help Meciar because he has a constant and loyal electorate who massively cast their ballots."
Though the European Union has not officially commented the results, Meciar's performance led some people in Brussels to say that the Union European, which Slovakia joins on May 1st, will never forget or forgive him.
