SMER-SD party

Slovak police have accused the intelligence chief and other senior security officials of creating a criminal group and conspiring to abuse power in a case just weeks before early elections, Reuters reported.

The predominantly anti-vax protesters received onsite support and words of encouragement from several opposition politicians, including far-right leader Marian Kotleba from the People's Party - Our Slovakia (LSNS). He oversaw the demonstration with MPs from the leftist SMER-SD party, prompting talk of future cooperation between the two parties.

No government in Slovak history has faced challenges like those confronting the new administration led by Matovic and his anti-establishment OLANO party. Along with the deadly virus, it has the contagion of decades of corruption to content with.

"No other government in Slovak history has ever started in such a complicated situation," President Zuzana Caputova said in a speech on March 19, expressing confidence that the cabinet would lead the country through the coronavirus crisis..

Call it the "subsidy paradox": EU cash meant to encourage development ends up misused by populist governments whose very existence undermines the bloc's cherished values. Worse, it gives them stamina and strength.

"Namely because of the situation we've seen since 2016, when a party supposedly built on a neo-Nazi ideology entered parliament," said Vilagi from Comenius University in Bratislava.

She was referring to the far-right Kotleba - People's Party Our Slovakia (LSNS), which is polling in second or third place ahead of the country's February 29 parliamentary election.

Politics in Slovakia has never been so divided between pro-European liberals and right-wing extremists, and analysts say any new government will stand or fall at the whim of the smallest parties that get into the national assembly.

If presidential and EU elections in 2019 were any indication of what to expect in parliamentary polls on February 29, Slovaks can brace for a robust couple of months of campaigning.

Shortly after the verdict, former Prime Minister Robert Fico leapt to Mazurek's defence in a Facebook video.

"Milan Mazurek only said what nearly a whole nation thinks," said Fico, leader of the governing SMER-SD party. "If you execute someone for truth, you will turn him into a national hero. Should we be afraid to say that part of the Roma people abuse the social system?"

"She brought a spirit of positive energy that has broken the bad mood that Slovaks have had for a long time," Zuborova, an analyst at the Bratislava Policy Institute think tank, told BIRN in an interview.

"She also represented a new hope that Slovakia might take a different direction than the rest of Central Europe."