Meciar lights the blue touch-paper ahead of election that will determine if Slovakia joins EU

Date: 27/06/02

This week's attempts to oust Slovakian premier Miklus Dzurinda will reinforce the view that the front-running candidate country will be judged on the result of its September election, writes Craig Winneker.

A FOUR-LANE superhighway runs from the heart of Slovakia westward, through the capital of Bratislava and straight up to the Austrian frontier - to what was once the Iron Curtain but is now the beckoning boundary of the EU.

There it meets a somewhat more subdued approach from the Union: a winding, rural road with stoplights at picturesque village intersections that make for a slow trip east to the border.

Slovakia, a country that did not exist ten years ago, has been on a fast-track to international legitimacy, speedily and sometimes painfully enacting reforms in the hopes of joining NATO and closing negotiations with the EU by the end of this year. After a slow start in the accession process, it is now among the front-running candidate states.

But as this historic moment approaches, there are signals that it could all go wrong at the last minute.

Only yesterday (26 June), the main opposition HZDS party, led by authoritarian former premier Vladimir Meciar, attempted to oust the current prime minister, Mikulas Dzurinda, over his alleged links to a transport scandal.

Although Dzurinda is expected to survive a no-confidence motion on 3 July, the uncertainty surrounding the government's future could damage the country's accession hopes. Even before this week's events, the head of the European Parliament's Slovakia delegation, Austrian MEP Hans-Peter Martin, stated that the country may not be ready to join. Slovakia is worried in such circumstances that NATO and the EU will not keep up their end of the bargain.

The stakes

Summer is hot in Bratislava, but the political climate in Slovakia over the coming months is guaranteed to be even hotter.

Not since the country achieved its independence a decade ago has it been at a more critical point in its history. But before it can join both NATO and the EU, Slovakia must first get past an election in September that will be anything but conclusive.

The vote count will set in motion a political endgame, the outcome of which depends largely on who emerges as the new head of Slovakia's government. The West will want proof that the country is moving forward with democratic reforms and not backward to the mid-1990s' rule of Meciar.

A few weeks after the vote the European Commission will issue a report on Slovakia's accession progress. Negotiations on the remaining unclosed chapters - including competition, agriculture and regional policy - will proceed at a feverish pace in order to reach what everyone still insists is a December finish line.

October's European Council in Brussels will be yet another hurdle, as applicant states wait anxiously for some kind of final-lap signal from EU leaders that enlargement will go ahead as planned.

Then will come November's NATO summit in Prague. Slovakia hopes to be among several former Warsaw Pact countries asked to join the alliance.

An invitation will be more than just a powerful postscript to the end of the Cold War; it will provide unstoppable momentum for EU membership.

First NATO, then the EU. Just about everyone from rural shopkeepers to the country's foreign minister, Eduard Kukan, realises that one depends upon the other. 'We do not believe that a country which is rejected by NATO will be good enough for the EU,' declares Kukan.

Seems simple enough, especially considering that the country has modernised its military capabilities and aligned itself with the West ideologically, and that the other 'Visegrad Four' countries - Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary - are already in NATO.

But questions remain in the West about Slovakia's political stability - particularly after this week's events - and they will have to be addressed in the election and the crucial days following it.

In the paradoxical world of European politics, the international community sometimes tries to foster incipient democracies by telling people how to vote. In this case, it warns Slovakia that if it wants to be in the club it must reject the politician everyone assumes will win.

The Meciar factor

Vladimir Meciar, leader of the opposition Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (it's known by the acronym HZDS, which nearly everyone pronounces as 'hazardous'), is not in government but his party is a dominant force on the scene.

His term as prime minister from 1993-98 was marked by corruption, isolationism and authoritarian rule. A strident and politically shrewd populist leader, he shunned the West and the West returned the favour, and the country fell far behind its neighbours in the drive to join the EU. In 1998 Meciar again won the election but was kept out of government by a coalition made up of several other parties. This year, history will have to repeat itself.

Can Slovakia ever get past Meciar? It may just be a matter of time. His mostly rural, elderly supporters feel left behind by the rapid pace of liberalisation and privatisation and are nostalgic for the 'good' old days. They still respect his role in winning the nation's independence.

But, like Meciar himself, they won't be a force forever. As Lubo Roman, a Slovak actor-turned-politician who is now president of the Bratislava regional government, puts it, 'In the theatre we had a nice saying: 'Don't worry, this will all be fixed by a few funerals'.'

For now, though, polls show Meciar is likely to capture 25-30 of the vote on 20-21 September, putting him well ahead of the other candidates.

But Western leaders have warned that if Meciar returns to power, Slovakia will be excluded from NATO and, probably, the EU.

On a visit to Washington earlier this month, Slovak President Rudolf Schuster promised US President George W. Bush that Meciar will not be prime minister again and HZDS will stay in opposition.

Indeed, with so much at stake, every politician, commentator and observer in Slovakia is certain of what the government will not be. What they are not sure of, however, is what it will be.

Direction unknown

If the spectre of Meciar can finally be erased, then who's next? Dzurinda, the current prime minister, has had to do much of the heavy lifting of reform, and his economic sacrifices have come at the expense of his political popularity. His Christian Democratic coalition party now polls at around 7-11 of the vote.

The charges of corruption an favouritism have damaged Dzurinda, as has the country's high unemployment rate. And, while every party - including HZDS - professes to support EU and NATO membership, several have not been shy about criticising the new policies adopted in the process of joining. This 'eurorealism' rhetoric will only increase as the election campaign heats up - further damaging the incumbent.

Dzurinda, then, may be the Moses of Slovakia's drive for EU and NATO membership, leading his people from the era of Meciar isolation to the promised land of international acceptance - only to be prevented from entering it himself.

Attention has shifted instead to 37-year-old attorney and member of parliament Robert Fico, leader of a new party called Smer (Slovak for 'direction').

Dismissed by some as a kind of 'Meciar Lite', Fico also sounds populist themes and refuses - cunningly in such a fragmented and personality-based political landscape - to be specific about how he'll run the country. A former member of the post-communist Party of the Democratic Left, he and his fellow Direction candidates are running on a vague anti-corruption, pro-rule-of-law platform.

'All of us are wondering which direction,' laughs Eric van der Linden, the European Commission's ambassador to Slovakia.

'By being unspecific about with whom he is willing to work - although he's said he won't work with Meciar - he scores high in the polls.'

Fico professes to be a follower of the so-called 'Third Way' politics of Tony Blair and Gerhard Schröder. He repudiates Meciar but not HZDS, and his desire to form a government with only a few players leads some to wonder whether he'll join forces with the pariah party.

Since Smer is approaching 20 in the polls, Fico may be able to do that, but it would require an HZDS without Meciar. Could the old war horse 'pull a Haider', in the words of van der Linden, and stay out of government even though his party is in the ruling coalition?

Even Meciar's own party apparatchiks are thinking along those lines. Olga Keltosova, one of 43 HZDS deputies in the 150-seat parliament, says if the price of legitimacy for her party is to dump Meciar, she doesn't mind paying it.

'There is no sense in going for the election if you can't have a spot in the government,' says Keltosova, who also serves as an alternate member of the European Convention. But to everyone else, the idea of HZDS without Meciar is a contradiction in terms. Like most of the parties - and there are several - HZDS is a one-man show.

'It's hard to imagine the party after him or without him,' says Jan Figel, Slovakia's chief EU negotiator.

That means the new government is likely to include Smer and several other parties, including but not limited to: Dzurinda's centre-right SDKU; the leftist Social Democratic Alternative, run by Peter Weiss, another former leader in the Party of the Democratic Left; the liberal Ano (which means 'yes') party of TV network owner Pavel Rusko; the Hungarian Coalition party, which regularly receives about 11 of the vote and a place in government; and others.

Complicating matters further, Fico says that because of corruption charges he will not include Dzurinda or Deputy Prime Minister Ivan Miklos in the new government, potentially making a Meciar-free coalition even tougher to forge. 'I think he is even more dangerous than Meciar,' says one young journalist of Fico, fearing what may be a form of 'populism with a human face'. But Fico, brash and confident, dismisses his critics. 'If your opponent doesn't have any arguments then he or she says you are a populist,' he argues. 'We will not put into risk our membership in NATO but I will not exclude any party' from the coalition. Translation: Meciar no, HZDS maybe.

Frantisek Sebej, chairman of the Slovak parliament's EU integration committee, says that in the end Fico will have to work with the other mainstream parties.

'He plays with the idea' of forming a government with HZDS, says Sebej, who is also vice-chairman of yet another new party, the Civic Conservatives.

'Psychologically Fico is probably closer to Meciar - he has authoritarian inclinations. But he's not going to commit political suicide.' It's worth paying attention to that diagnosis because Sebej, a thoughtful 55-year-old, is a psychologist. A part of the generation that remembers Soviet troops on Slovak soil, he betrays a Freudian hint of anxiety when he talks about the nation's future political direction. 'I'm almost sure,' he says, 'that this country can't enter into dictatorship anymore.'

The road to membership

Even with all of the last-minute questions and potential roadblocks, there is a sense of inevitability in Slovakia about membership of NATO and the EU. Figel, the soft-spoken but confident negotiator, downplays the problems Meciar may cause in September. 'If that's the only question vis-à-vis Slovakia then that's great,' he says of the election outcome. 'It's a big question, but it's in our hands.'

Other concerns, such as how to resolve disputes over agriculture subsidies or state aid programs, may be less dramatic but tougher to resolve.

And even in a country where more than 70 of the people support EU membership - the highest level of 'europtimism' in the candidate states - additional sacrifices may be tough to sell.

For example, closing the competition chapter may require ending special 'tax holidays' given to two top employers in the country: Volkswagen and US Steel. That could cost jobs.

Similarly, farmers will find themselves in a free-market with heavily subsidised Western competitors and get nothing in return for several years.

Perhaps most painfully, in a country where seemingly everyone smokes, the price of cigarettes will soon double.

On the persistent questions about corruption, everyone says the country is working hard to contain it. But only this week Transport Minister Josef Macejko was sacked without ceremony after a TV programme revealed he had tried to rig the result of a tender for 35 trains.

Keltosova, the HZDS deputy, is quick to remark that corruption isn't confined to applicant states. She points out that it wasn't so long after the end of the last Meciar government that the entire European Commission had to resign. 'We have our problems, they have their problems,' she winks.

Across the political spectrum, the country's leaders are well aware of the roadblocks ahead. 'This is a crucial year for Slovakia,' says Rastislav Kacer, state secretary for NATO and EU integration in the defence ministry.

'The four years from 1994-1998 was another crucial period - one in which we failed. It was a great failure of this country [not to be invited to join NATO before]. This cannot repeat for this country. It would be fatal.'

Roman, the Reaganesque former actor, compares Slovakia and the EU to a bride and groom whose families do not yet know each other.

'We are a beautiful bride but we have a lot of deficiencies,' he says. 'Now it's up to the husband to shape up the bride.'

This quaint analysis, however, doesn't consider the possibility - slim but on everyone's mind nonetheless - that the bride will be left waiting at the altar.

Major feature. Author says that recent attempts to oust Slovakian premier Miklus Dzurinda will reinforce the view that the front-running candidate country will be judged on the result of its September 2002 election.