Hungarian Conservative

Amid a record high voter turnout, former House Speaker Peter Pellegrini, the sovereigntist candidate, won the Slovak presidential election with more than 1.4 million votes, including those of most ethnic Hungarian voters.

While conservative ethnic Hungarians mainly stood behind Alliance candidate Krisztián Forró, a significant part of the liberal camp either stayed away from the polls or voted for the liberal–progressive Slovak candidate in the first round. From the Hungarian perspective, it is also ominous that the participation in the Hungarian-majority Southern areas was well below that of the rest of the country. If this trend is not reversed shortly, it could lead to dire political consequences for the whole ethnic community.

‘The main criticisms against the four Slovak governments of the past three years were the lack of competence and the imposition of ad hoc solutions. The current government coalition has produced the exact opposite: it carries out the programme that its political opponents are most afraid of and does so with panache.’