Smer: Success Story or Scandal?
Smer: Success Story or Scandal?

Summary/Abstract: After almost one and a half years of being left out in the cold, the leading governing party in Bratislava, Smer-sociálna demokracia (Direction - Social Democracy) was readmitted in February to the great international family of the centre-left. The decision of the Party of European Socialists (PES) to this effect was met with ambivalent reactions in the public sphere and continues to divide the socialist movement itself to the present day. This is quite understandable; the decision of the PES Presidency in Brussels was probably the most controversial move in the European party’s history – and the most incomprehensible as well. The damage it will do is almost impossible to estimate. In October 2006, the PES suspended the temporary membership of the party led by Robert Fico – the current Slovak prime minister – after Smer formed a government coalition with the Slovak National Party (SNS), which was (and still is) regarded as racist and xenophobic. The PES had no other choice, in fact, since the principles of the organization set down in 2001 in Berlin take an explicit and unequivocal stand on this issue: it is deemed unacceptable for PES member parties to form an alliance with extremist political groups at either local or national level. The rehabilitation of Smer was conditional on abandoning this partnership. The events of the past 18 months suggest, however, that Fico never seriously considered complying with the decision made by the PES leadership in 2006. On the contrary, he initially attempted to pose as the victim of some kind of conspiracy involving the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSzP). Later on, as the deadline approached in Brussels for revision of the PES’s decision on the suspension of Smer, the party leader and prime minister gradually changed communication tactics and began to relay the message to the world that the joint government administration in fact enabled Smer to “domesticate” the SNS, and that the achievements of the coalition were on the way to pulling the rug from under extremist and populist groups in Slovakia.[…]

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