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Return of the prodigal son By Daniel Butora Slovakia's second consecutive rejection of Vladimir Meciar confirms that the country has come home It may not be the best family in town, the Visegrad group, but for a Central European country, the choice of which "family" to join is somewhat limited. And for several years, Slovakia was not even very welcome among the democratic Visegrad countries of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. But the late-May victory of Rudolf Schuster over Vladimir Meciar in the second round of the country's first direct presidential elections has confirmed Slovakia's return to the Visegrad circle. After Meciar's Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) won the largest bloc of seats in the parliamentary elections last autumn but was ousted from power by a unified multiparty opposition, Slovakia's strong man has now been defeated for the second time in eight months. The May result should silence those who objected that the HZDS actually beat Mikulas Dzurinda's Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) by 1 percentage point last autumn. Schuster, the candidate of Dzurinda's broad coalition government, defeated Meciar by 57 percent to 43. That's an even bigger difference than Ehud Barak's victory over Benjamin Netanyahu in the Israeli prime ministerial election. But Meciar's defeat produced a rather different result. While Netanyahu resigned his party position half an hour after the election results were made public, there were no calls for Meciar's resignation as the leader of the HZDS. The reason is simple: There is no future for HZDS without Meciar. He didn't do so badly in the elections, after all -- 1.3 million people voted from him -- and since Schuster commanded the support of the 10 percent ethnic Hungarian minority in Slovakia, Meciar's share among "ethnic Slovaks" was almost 50 percent. Meciar had left politics for "solitude" after his defeat last September. High-ranking HZDS members understood correctly that their main political aim must be to persuade Meciar to come back, for with him, they might have a chance to succeed. They were right, as far as it goes: Meciar's campaigning led to a rise in HZDS support, and gave the party back its self-confidence. So Meciar's 43 percent was a kind of victory for HZDS after all. If Meciar is going to remain on the scene, so will his party, and this was probably the main reason why Meciar decided to run: to push HZDS back into the game. But time is not on Meciar's side. Most of his voters are elderly, and in the long term, his support will slowly decrease. And there isn't any short term for him. The president was just elected for a five-year term, and Dzurinda's government, with a comfortable (more than three-fifths) majority in parliament, should stay in power until the next scheduled elections in 2002. There is no way for anybody to endanger its position. Except for themselves, of course. Dzurinda's Cabinet consists of four political groupings, which include 10 parties altogether, from free-market liberals to social conservatives to Hungarian conservatives to various leftist groups, especially the post-communist Party of the Democratic Left (SDL). While Dzurinda's background is Christian Democrat, the speaker of parliament, Jozef Migas, is the leader of the SDĒ, and the former communist Schuster resigned as the chairman of his left-wing party only after the presidential elections. This coalition was created as an anti-Meciar instrument, a marriage of convenience, and the hearts of many ministers are beating for different mistresses. Meciar's strong showing in the presidential race reminded them that there were some good reasons for their marriage, but the question is how long it will last. With the devaluation of the Slovak crown, even the socialist ministers gave their reserved support to the austerity package pushed by the government's main reformer, Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Miklos. But don't count on the long-term loyalty of the SDL ministers. They won't hesitate to trip Miklos, or even Dzurinda, if there is an opportunity. While the general public's tolerance of former communists is quite high, the SDĒ's tolerance of conservatives, liberals and Hungarians is low. Immediately after parliamentary elections, the SDL publicly questioned the planned participation of Hungarian parties in the new government, and it attacks them from nationalistic positions on a regular basis. And SDL's dislike of free-marketers is only slightly lower that their hatred of Meciar. Finance Minister Brigita Schmognerova admitted recently that she wanted to emigrate after the communists lost power in Czechoslovakia in 1989. Corruption remains another key problem for the new Slovakia. It flourished under Meciar's government and hasn't disappeared with the new power-holders at all. Still, this government is without question a better option than what the country experienced under Meciar in recent years. There is some degree of unity among the government members in the goal of joining the European Union, and possibly also NATO. Don't expect miracles, but at the December 1999 EU Summit in Finland, Slovakia might somehow push closer to the union. The presidential vote confirmed the changes begun by last autumn's parliamentary elections: The country shifted away from being a mafianized Meciarland on Central Europe's periphery back to the family of muddled post-communist nations. Not such a bad move, after all. --The writer is an analyst at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. |
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