Slovakia's Robert Fico explores coalition options after election setback

BRATISLAVA: Leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico on Sunday put out feelers for forming a coalition after Slovakia's elections but admitted the task would be hard after a surge by smaller parties, including the far right, erased his working majority.
After dubbing the outcome of Saturday's vote a "big mishmash" of parties, Fico announced the start of exploratory talks with other mainstream parties about forming a coalition.
But the biggest centrist group said it would reject any teamup with Fico, a populist who campaigned on a fiercely anti-refugee platform.
"Today we begin the first preliminary negotiations" Fico said, vowing to "try to assemble a meaningful and stable government."
"It isn't going to be easy. We'll have to do everything to rule out the likelihood of early elections."
Full official results on Sunday showed Fico's Smer-Social Democrats (Smer-SD) party with 49 seats, down sharply from its comfortable 83-seat majority in the 150-member parliament.
The liberal Freedom and Solidarity SaS came second with 21 seats, followed by the conservative OLANO-NOVA which took 19 seats.
But two far-right nationalist groups made spectacular gains, giving them a potential role in determining the stability and lifespan of the future government.
The Slovak National Party (SNS) made it back into parliament after a four-year absence with 15 seats, while LS-Nase Slovensko (Our Slovakia) led by Marian Kotleba secured 14 seats to enter the assembly for the first time.
Analysts cautioned Fico would struggle to knit together a governing coalition, as a record total of eight parties breached a five-percent threshold to enter parliament.
"Fico will need at least two to three partners to form a coalition and a government," said analyst Abel Ravasz.
"The opposition can only form a government if it can gather six centrist and right parties in an alliance".
Building a coalition "could take weeks, even months", political analyst Samuel Abraham told AFP, adding that for Fico to clinch his third term, he would likely "distance himself" from the far right and woo three or four centrist parties.
SaS leader Richard Sulik on Sunday ruled out a coalition with Fico and signalled his willingness to try to form a government should Fico fail.
"We'll see if Smer-SD is able to form a government. If it is, all is done. If not, it's our turn," Sulik told journalists.
He added: "When it comes to forming the government, we only rule out cooperation with the Smer-SD."
In 2010, Fico scored a hollow victory in elections when a gaggle of liberal centrists and moderate right-wingers teamed up to govern after he won but failed to form a coalition.
The rise of the far right has spurred dismay among mainstream parties and political commentators, as well as soul-searching about the cause of their success.
Slovakia is gearing up to take the helm of the EU from July -- a role that will put the health of its democracy in the world's spotlight.
"It will be a major disaster at the time when the Slovak Republic will preside over the European Union to have fascists in our parliament," Smer-SD MEP Monika Flasikova Benova said.
An anti-fascist protest organised on Facebook for Monday in Bratislava drew nearly 7,000 supporters in a matter of hours after being launched on Sunday.
Abraham described Kotleba as "a neo-Nazi" but attributed the far-right success to the populist talk used by Fico on the campaign trail.
"Fico used nationalist rhetoric regarding migrants and this strengthened the extreme right in Slovakia," he said.
Fico vowed to "never bring even a single Muslim to Slovakia" and filed a lawsuit against an EU-wide plan to redistribute refugees across the bloc.

He starkly warned that "we have reached the point when... Greece is likely to be sacrificed for the sake of Schengen", referring to the 26-nation passport-free travel zone.
His anti-refugee stridency echoes those of other hardliners in the EU's poorer ex-communist east, including Czech President Milos Zeman, Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban and Poland's Jaroslaw Kaczynski.
All have shunned refugees as Europe grapples with its worst migration crisis since World War II.
Analyst Ravasz told AFP that Fico "lost a lot of momentum" as his unwavering anti-refugee drive overshadowed bread-and-butter issues like salary hikes for teachers and medical personnel in the eurozone country of 5.4 million.
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