In Slovakia, Little Change Despite Decades of Protest

November 2014 was again a month of marches in Bratislava, with thousands taking to the streets of the Slovak capital to deplore state corruption much as their parents had massed to bring down communism a quarter century ago.

Triggered by yet another egregious public procurement scandal, one march on parliament drew an estimated 5,000 people.

“There are so many of us that even the most oblivious (politician) can’t ignore us,” maverick opposition MP Alojz Hlina told the crowd, perhaps somewhat hopefully given Slovakia’s recent history.

In a sense, the barricades have never really come down during Slovakia’s 22 years of independence, nor have the protestors ever been entirely dispersed. But neither do they have much to show for their dissent.

Chanting crowds in the tens of thousands packed Bratislava’s SNP Square in the mid-1990s to challenge the authoritarian rule of Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar. During his term the son of the president was violently abducted to Austria by the secret service, while a 1997 NATO membership referendum was thwarted when the Interior Ministry left a key question off the ballot. His anti-democratic excesses saw Slovakia dropped from the short-list of candidates for early Western integration. Then-US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright described Slovakia in 1996 as “a black hole on the map of Europe.”

The mostly young, urban, middle-class protesters saw in Mr Meciar the same arrogance that had been the hallmark of Czechoslovakia’s communists, and feared it would derail the country’s return to the West. Other grievances included crony privatisation, which had enriched Meciar supporters, and a creeping sense that Slovakia was becoming a mafia state (police in 1997 found and deactivated 141 bombs, compared to only 12 in 1994). In watershed 1998 elections turnout reached 84%, with voters handing a decisive two-thirds majority to the anti-Meciar opposition.

While Mr Meciar’s successor, the Western-oriented, market-friendly Mikulas Dzurinda, initially enjoyed massive public support, he also faced a full-blown economic crisis – a current account deficit of 11% of GDP, 30% interest rates on government bonds, state banks on the verge of collapse, and the country’s largest employer, the VSZ steel mill, in default. To cope, Mr Dzurinda slashed spending, cut social benefits and deregulated prices, driving unemployment to almost 20% in 2001, the highest rate in Europe.

The economic misery drew new crowds to Bratislava’s streets, this time mostly elderly, rural and unionized workers who had lost most in the turmoil since Mr Meciar. It also provided a stage for a new populist champion: Robert Fico, a young, articulate lawyer quietly bankrolled by entrepreneurs who had profited from Mr Meciar’s rule, and who now understood the need for a less pugilistic brand of politics.

After launching his social-democratic Smer party in 1999, Mr Fico took aim at what he claimed was massive corruption in the Dzurinda-era sale of state utilities to European investors such as Deutsche Telekom, Ruhrgas and EdF. He also chided Mr Dzurinda for putting integration above prosperity and bringing Slovaks into Europe “with bare asses.”

Mr Fico didn’t win 2002 elections – his ambition was perhaps a little too naked for Slovakia’s dour electorate – but his populist attacks ensured that Mr Dzurinda won only a three-seat parliamentary majority for all that he had saved the economy and brought Slovakia into the EU and NATO.

Despite its apparent fragility, the centre-right coalition rolled out ambitious reforms to pensions, health care, taxes and the labour market. FDI flowed in at a record rate, particularly to the auto sector where trophies included two €700m plants built by KIA/Hyundai and Citroen. By 2007 annual GDP growth had increased to a Europe-leading 10.4%.

But the margin for bickering in parliament was minute, and by 2005 the coalition was depending on independent MPs and opposition defectors to pass laws. Mr Fico was in full cry, alleging corruption in ongoing privatization sales, vote-buying in parliament, and a venal partnership between Mr Dzurinda’s people and the Penta capital group, an investment fund which Mr Fico described as “the coalition’s unofficial fifth member.”

Mr Fico’s charges struck enough of a chord with reform-weary voters that they hoisted him to power in 2006 along with a pair of unsavoury coalition partners – Mr Meciar and a nationalist leader who had once drunkenly exhorted Slovaks to “get in our tanks and go flatten Budapest.” Slovakia’s European partners were not pleased, and Mr Fico struggled throughout his term to rein in his intemperate allies and defend his own party against allegations of massive corruption – this time in public procurement and the use of European structural funds.

The 2008 financial crisis scuppered Mr Fico’s coalition and Mr Dzurinda’s grouping returned to power in 2010, this time in the form of a four-party coalition headed by former sociology professor Iveta Radicova (Mr Dzurinda having been judged too tainted by corruption charges to lead). But Ms Radicova barely made it to the halfway mark of her tenure before disaster struck.

Over Christmas 2011, a file was uploaded to the Internet purporting to be transcripts of a secret service surveillance operation from 2006. Alleged conversations between a Penta executive, a Dzurinda government minister, a senior privatisation official and others contained sordid references to million-euro kickbacks, rigged tenders and bribes to MPs.

The file – whose contents were cautiously admitted to be authentic by the justice minister and Ms Radicova herself – unleashed another wave of protests across the country. Police were injured by youths throwing paving stones as a crowd tried to storm parliament. Another demonstration hung a figure in effigy from a life-sized scaffold outside government offices. “What do I have to do with any of this?” Ms Radicova demanded as police in riot gear set up a cordon around the building.

But scandal-weary voters were clearly not inclined to give any right-wing politician the benefit of the doubt, and snap elections in 2012 returned Mr Fico to power with a solid majority – the first time since 1989 Slovakia had not been ruled by a coalition.

These days, battling longstanding health problems, Mr Fico seems as weary of turmoil as do his compatriots. After a competent start to his second term, including a 2015 budget deficit target of below 2%, beating EU rules, he attempted to escape the fray by running for a more tranquil office, the presidency. But he was defeated in March elections by political greenhorn Andrej Kiska; since then his approval ratings have fallen and his inner circle has been peppered with corruption allegations.

In the most recent scandal, which led to the end-year demonstrations, state hospitals bought overpriced CT machines from private suppliers with ties to members of Smer. Mr Fico reacted with uncharacteristic pique, forcing the resignations of the speaker and deputy speaker of parliament, the health minister and four hospital directors. “I’m not going to let anyone dirty my name or that of my party,” he wrote in a Facebook post.

On Bratislava’s SNP Square, the site of so many protests over the years, aging Catholic priest Anton Srholec took the microphone to deliver a different verdict to thousands of onlookers. Sentenced by the Communists to 12 years for trying to flee Czechoslovakia in the 1950s, Father Srholec did 10 years’ hard labour in the country’s uranium mines.

“Twenty-five years after (the 1989 revolution), Slovakia is again at the barricades,” he told the crowd. “Let’s return to democracy the spirit that these rascals stole from it.”

The applause was muted, as if people respected the priest’s moral stature but no longer believed the resurrection he called for was possible.

Tom Nicholson – freelance journalist, holds an MA in History from Queen’s University in Canada. Since 1992 he has been based in Slovakia, reporting on organized crime and political corruption. His articles have appeared in the Financial Times, the Guardian, the Sunday Telegraph, the Globe and Mail and the National Post. He currently leads the investigative reporting programme of the Slovak daily Sme.

 

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