14 June 2010 / AP, BRATISLAVA
Slovakia’s prime minister said on Sunday he would try to put together a governing coalition even after voters handed him a setback by giving the center-right opposition a majority.
The results of Saturday’s election were a blow to Robert Fico’s party, which had promised to maintain the country’s welfare state even as other European countries hack their budgets to deal with the economic crisis. Though his party took the largest share of the vote, the three opposition parties, together with an ethnic Hungarian party, have a majority with 79 seats in the 150-seat parliament and would form a ruling coalition if Fico fails to win one of them over. The leaders of the four parties have so far rejected his efforts. Fico, nonetheless, called the result an “absolute success” that gives him the right to try to form a government because of his party’s first-place finish. “I’m absolutely satisfied with the result,” Fico said. ”We had a right to be given a chance to form a government. It’s our duty to seek [it],” he said. “If we fail, we will respect a right-wing government, and become a tough opposition,” he said. The Statistics Office said Fico’s Smer-Social Democracy took 34.8 percent of the vote, or 62 seats with all votes counted Sunday. Fico’s junior coalition partner, the ultranationalist Slovak National Party of Jan Slota, received 5.1 percent, or 9 seats. But, another coalition member, the party of former authoritarian Premier Vladimir Meciar was below the 5-percent threshold needed to win parliamentary representation.
