First a few geographical notes: Slovakia is on the Northern side of the Carpathian Basin, and except for a few Southern regions, mountainous. It is a mostly rural country (living from tourism and agriculture) between a few far-removed industrialised cities, of which the two biggest are the capital Bratislava (Hungarian: Pozsony, German: Preßburg) on the Southwestern edge of the country, and Košice (Hungarian: Kassa, German: Kaschau) near the Southeast edge.

The heavy load of history

Slovakian history treats the empire of Great Moravia in the last part of the first millennium AD as ancestral. It was formed by one Slavic principality (Moravia) conquering another (Nitra) in 833. A generation later, it was visited by famed Byzantine missionaries Cyril and Method (left on Slovakian money; originators of the cyrillic alphabet), which made Greater Moravia part of the Christian world and a cultural centre - hence Cyril-and-Method's-Day (5 July) is a top national holiday.

The empire fell apart after its control of the Northern-Northwestern parts of the Carpathian Basin was reduced by the invasion of the Magyar (Hungarian) tribes from around AD 900. But reborn Nitra principality played a regional role during the next century, until it was torn up by two new kingdoms: Poland and Hungary. These formed in the transition from loose associations of tribes of free pagan men into centralised feudal Christian kingdoms, in which most people became serfs.

Oravský Podzámok/Árva vára, an old castle in Northwestern Slovakia

After some further volatility, all the Northern Carpathian Basin fell under the Hungarian Kingdom - and for long centuries, the population had three clear divisions: most of the serfs were the descendants of the Slavic population, most of the city people were descendants of settlers from Germany invited to work the mines and establish crafts, and most aristocrats and officials were Hungarian-speakers.

Meanwhile, as the Hungarian Kingdom fell in three parts after the Ottoman expansion, what is now Slovakia flourished as the centre of the Habsburg-held part. It also became the centre of anti-Turkish and then anti-Habsburg independence movements, which later developed into Hungarian nationalism, and in turn triggered Slovakian nationalism.

Most of you may know Habsburg emperor Joseph II as the bumbling tone-deaf ruler from the movie Amadeus. In truth he was an enlightened absolutist ruler who tried massive reforms in his empire. As that included (a) cutting noblemen's privileges and taxing them, (b) a Germanification of the whole diverse population, the toughest resistance was but up by the semi-independent Hungarian nobility - with success, Joseph II had to recant before his death. As a consequence, Slovakians too remained in oppressive serfdom, and Hungarian nationalists began their own push for language absolutism. As a later consequence, in no country is the view of aristocrats more broadly negative than in Slovakia, and despite wanting to extinguish Slovakian too, Joseph II has a positive image.

The conflict with Hungarian nationalism ensued, including rebellions against the 1848 Hungarian Revolution that were bloodily put down, and ever stronger language absolutism after the Habsburgs granted autonomy to Hungary withing the empire (transforming it into Austria-Hungary). Then came World War I, after which Austria-Hungary was cut up. But what came out of peace talks was Czechoslovakia, a formation in which Slovakia was backwaters for Czechia, and which had large minorities, seen by neighbours as reason to demand border changes. Shortly after the Munich decision about the Sudeten, Hitler and Mussolini arbitraged another border change in in favour of Hungary.

When half a year before WWII, Nazi Germany took the rest of what is now the Czech Republic, Hungary also took further parts (the Easternmost part), but the rest turned into a fascist puppet state under the leadership of clergyman Jozef Tiso (right). Some nationalists today look back at it with pride as the first independent Slovakia, pointing out that there were two wings of the regime and Tiso's was milder and less subservient to the Nazis, nevertheless both wings were fascist and collaborated in the Holocaust. However, unlike in the southern neighbour, originally only communist resistance gathered steam, culminating in the grand 1944 Slovak National Uprising, a less-known chapter of WWII history I shall diary about on its 29 August birthday.

Modern bridge over the Danube in Bratislava, named of the Slovak National Uprising, in the background typical 'communist'-era apartment blocks

After WWII: back into being backwater in Czechoslovakia, after border changes were revised (except for the Easternmost, majority Eastern rite Christian part, which Stalin grabbed for himself and is now part of Ukraine), and some ethnic cleansing less consequent than in the Sudeten. But Czechoslovakia had a federal nature, thus the first free elections in 1990 also created democratically legitimised Slovakian political structures. Even though 1968 hero Alexander Dubček was a Slovak and now became speaker of the Federal Assembly, independence, pursued by the new Slovakian leaders and facilitated by Czech Republic leader Klaus to have their own fiefdom, came 1 January 1993.

Parties, figures

I'll list by parties, giving Slovakian acronym, English translation of full name, and May 2006 numbers in the ISŠÚ/UVVM poll.

KDH (Christian Democratic Movement) 10.2%
Never a large party, I begin with it as this formation resembles a classic ideological formation most: national-conservative, Catholic-pro-clerical Christian Democrats, who coalesced around Ján Čarnogurský (who was also PM for a year before independence). This party also triggered the current early elections, with a spat about religious 'autonomy' that should have included denial of abortion by Catholic doctors. For most other parties, the leader is more defining than ideology.

SDKÚ (Slovak Democratic and Christian Union) 11.4%
Current PM Mikuláš Dzurinda (right: after finishing a marathon run, his favourite sport) was a Christian Democrat, propelled to power by a broad right-to-centre-left coalition of then opposition parties (SDK = Slovak Democratic Coalition), that later tried to merge into a party. When that was blown up in 2001 not the least by the KDH, various figures unified by being pro-Dzurinda collected in SDKÚ. It is generally centre-right socially and neoliberal economically. It recently 'unified with' (in practice swallowed) DS (Democratic Party), another remains of SDK.

SMK/MKP (Party of the Hungarian Coalition) 10.8%
This party aims to represent the Hungarian minority (today around 10%, mostly living as regional majority in Southern lowland areas; Gypsies are second, c. 5%). It is itself a broad coalition of ideologically different parties, with moderate Christian Democrats dominating at present - which made their participation in the current government relatively easy. Current leader Béla Bugár, of said dominant wing, has a positive image in parts of the majority population. But conflict ensues not just because of SMK/MKP's still present nationalist wing: the party's wish of territorial autonomy is seen by others as threat of separatism, and the nationalist card is strong enough for national-level partners to avoid coalitions with them at local level at any price.

SF (Free Forum) 6.2%
It seems liberals have to regroup every four years around another leader. In 1998, it was SOP (Party of Civic Understanding), formed by the then major of Košice, later President Rudolf Schuster. In 2002, it was ANO (Alliance of the New Citizen), formed by private TV owner Pavel Rusko - but last year, the latter left the government and then collapsed (now polling 1.5%). The current reincarnation is SF, which was created by one Ivan Šimko (right, background) who left Dzurinda's SDKÚ in pique, but to his shock, party members elected someone else as leader: former journalist Zuzana Martináková (right), who is rather popular. Like ANO before it, SF is moderately liberal socially, and strongly neoliberal economically.

HZDS (Movement for a Democratic Slovakia) 10.9%
This is the party of the defining man of Slovakia's first decade, Vladimír Mečiar (right). His past included being a boxer and being fired from the Party for reformism. He started to alienate people as first Slovak PM in 1990-1, then after he was first deposed, seized the moment to form a populist movement (HZDS) that would dominate the party landscape until now. Mečiar and his party mixed some social demagoguery and moderate reformism with nationalistic and xenophobic elements, an aggressive style (including hitting people on public events), and was characterised by strong clientism (also accepting former careerist Party members into HZDS) and dark dealings (more on that in the next section).

Smer ("Direction") 32.0%
Slovakia used to have a centre-left formation that, after a number of permutations like the liberals, finally fell apart before the last elections. Then Robert Fico (right), a former member and millionaire businessman, formed his left-populist movement. Already third (behind SDKÚ and HZDS) with 13.5% in 2002, capitalising on the popular backlash to neoliberal reforms, it leads in polls and will probably win next week. Abandoning Bliarist sympathies in the process, no major former East Bloc country party is as adamant amount being leftist (they even re-named the party Smer - sociálna demokracia after swallowing other splinters). My problem with Fico, beyond lack of trust, is that he shows no scruples allying with other populist or extremist parties (and also plays the nationalist card).

SNS (Slovak National Party) 9.2%
This is the local far-right, the party of "Slovakian Le Pen" Ján Slota (right), who was also longtime major of Northwestern industrial town Žilina (Hungarian: Zsolna, German: Sillein). It was given undue prominence when Mečiar relied on them for majority. The party broke in two before the last elections and both parts fell under 5%, but now everything is back to 'normal' (the 5-10% band).

KSS (Communist Party of Slovakia) 3.6%
These are the unreconstituted communists. Thanks to the "reforms", they rose from oblivion and are currently in parliament, but Smer's success could leave them outside again.

Post-independence political history

The story of the first ten years was basically: Mečiar against everyone else. With a brief interruption, he governed until 1998, in coalition with the far-right SNS. While (depending on whom you ask) he averted or delayed an economic collapse like in Slovakia's neighbours, he conducted a power grab at home -- going for all political, economic, media, and judicial positions --, while generating increasing international isolation. (There was conflict over a nuclear plant with Austria and over a dam on the Danube with Hungary.) But that wasn't the worst part: the worst part was the collusion of secret services and mafias in dark operations.

The most prominent case was the kidnapping of the President's son. After the man Mečiar made figurehead President, Michal Kováč, made himself independent, a longer struggle by all means followed. This included machinations to get his son Michal Jr., who made business in Germany, under suspicion of business fraud (charges he was later cleared of) and get an EU-wide arrest warrant on him. Then in August 1995, the secret service kidnapped Michal Jr., forced-fed him with drugs, took him to neighbouring Austria in a car trunk, and then dumped him somewhere near the police -- so that he is arrested for drunken driving, and held for the aforementioned warrant. But the plan didn't exactly work out: the kidnappers too were stopped by police, and Austrian authorities saw something is foul. When Slovakian judicial authorities tried to get the culprits, two investigative judges were removed from the case one after the other, and then crown witness Róbert Remiaš was killed with a car bomb, and Mečiar issued amnesties upon leaving office (Kováč still has to campaign for their repeal).

Another big operation, code-named "Omega", was meant to destabilize governments in neighbouring countries. Not all details went public, but dots can be connected. There were the bombing series before the 1994 and 1998 Hungarian elections (hurting no one). Pyrotechnical evidence links these to the also 1998 carbombing of a Hungarian mafia trial witness (and four bystanders) by a Slovakian mafia hit team with secret service past, which got fake passports and explosives from the secret service, and members of which were themselves assassinated soon after. Their ethnic-Hungarian godfather was the same Ľudovít/Lajos Sátor, who next year ordered the worst mafia showdown in Central Europe, when 10 members of a rival clan were massacred in Dunajská Streda (Hungarian: Dunaszerdahely, German: Niedermarkt), allegedly because they knew too much about other political assassinations which upcoming trials would deal with.

It was against such forces that that very broad coalition of opposition parties formed, and won to form the Dzurinda government in 1998. In the next four years, they had to deal with Mečiar's cooked books, but spent more time with internal struggles, while the judicial treatment of the dealings of the previous regime went at a snail's space. To this day, it only reached Mečiar's right-hand man and secret service boss Ivan Lexa (and that only on lesser charges), the ex-PM remained untouched - and his party resurgent.

However, three factors: some good signs in the economy, a more stable coalition to back the Dzurinda government (the PM-party SDKÚ appears, centre-left elements exit/disappear), and the internal feud of the far-right that kept them outside ensured a second Dzurinda government. Now they saw the mandate to act: Dzurinda made Slovakia fit for the EU -- and conducted radical neoliberal 'reforms'. The latter included the introduction of flat tax, healthcare privatisation, massive cuts in public services and social spending.

As I diaried, the results were: attraction of foreign investment (chiefly car factories) and massive GDP growth feted abroad; while gross regional inequalities, high joblessness, retirees unable to pay drugs, and members of the worst-hit Gypsy minority staging a "bread rebellion" in February 2004 (breaking into foodstores) propelled Dzurinda's popularity to the bottom -- and left-populist Smer's to the top. A first victory of the latter was in April 2004, when the candidate they supported for popularly elected figurehead President, Ivan Gašparovič, first won second place against the government's candidate and then the run-off against Mečiar.

Meanwhile, Dzurinda's new coalition started to splinter, too. He first alienated/drove off liberal factions by creating silly scandals, then came the spat with the Christian Democrats during which the latter's ministers resigned, triggering the early elections.

Some campaign chatter

This campaign had much less scandals than the one in Hungary (thus "boring"), but still.

There were some accusations of SDKÚ syphoning off public money for its campaign, and an insider estate deal. Meanwhile, the President and the government fought some battles, for example the former refused to approve a Central Bank vice-governor nominee (a 34-year-old yuppie from the government, a clearly unfit political nominee, but the President is supposed to be a figurehead). And our 'beloved' Commission President Barroso made trouble in Slovakia too, with a visit during which he made unpaid campaign for the incumbent...

But parties focused on an ideological debate, mainly over the most unpopular part of the neoliberal reforms: healthcare privatisation. Mečiar was more in the background, not the least as he built and tries to maintain a new image as civilised centrist pro-European politician(!).

Robert Fico hasn't closed out any possible coalition partners, and current government parties are too fed up with each other to make a pre-election agreement. Yet, realistically, as polls stand the election is likely to result in a standoff of Smer+HZDS and right-wing+liberal parties, with the far-right as kingmakers...