Socialist International

SMER-SD gave way to a four-party, mostly right-wing coalition led by populist Ivo Matovic's OLANO, which more than doubled its vote from 11 per cent to 25 per cent — well ahead of SMER-SD's 18 per cent — with a vague programme almost entirely devoted to dismantling what Matovic claims is a system of corruption built by former premier Robert Fico. 

"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..

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) has criticized the government's economic package in the struggle against the coronavirus, announcing its own 27-point Community Solidarity Program.

See also:

Slovak Democracy Seen at Stake in Make-or-Break Election

Slovak Far Right Courts Youth Vote in Pivotal Ballot

Kotleba: Slovak Extremist Who Made Far Right Fashionable

Don't Underestimate Slovakia's Neo-Nazi Threat

Slovak Election Dilemma: To Talk or Not to Talk to Fascists?

The main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) on Jan. 27 urged the government to take precautions against earthquakes, after a deadly quake jolted Turkey's eastern province of Elazığ, claiming at least 41 lives and injuring thousands.

PSD's (Social Democratic Party) interim leader Marcel Ciolacu announced on Saturday that he will sign the petition launched by PES activists Romania on a European minimum salary and proposed that Social Democrats also join this initiative. "I know that PSD needs to become active again at European level. We have to take responsibility for what we did wrong and work together.

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.

"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."

Some 63 billion Turkish Liras were collected in special communication taxes following the 1999 Marmara earthquake, the worst seismic disaster in the country's recent history, with the taxes becoming permanent in 2004, the main opposition Republican People's Party's (CHP) spokesperson has said.

Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) held an International Syria Conference on Sep. 28 in Istanbul.