Slovakia Takes a Left Turn...For The Worse

According to the Prague Daily Monitor of the Czech Republic, the pro-socialist Smer-Social Democrat party - led by Robert Fico - won what looks like to be the majority of seats in the weekend elections for Slovakia's parliament. The center-right SDKU-DS party was second, and the Slovak National Party was third. Election turnout was low, about 55 percent.

The current prime minister, Mikulas Dzurinda, shackled his country to the increasingly neo-Soviet European Union. Although he has introduced a flat tax on business and personal income, brought foreign investment into his country and strengthened its currency, according to the CeskeNoviny news website, unemployment is still high. According to the EUobserver, unemployment is at a high of 11 percent. And according to the British news website Monsters and Critics, both social spending cuts and the raising of consumer taxes made things worse.

Fico promised the Smer would roll back some of the reforms that the current Dzurinda government put into place. But it may not necessarily happen, according to the news website EurActiv.com. Dzurinda could continue with his current coalition government and also add the support of former authoritarian premier, Vladimir Meciar and his HZDS party. The HZDS got a little under 9% of the vote. The current prime minister is confident that Fico and the Smer will not be able to form a government and reverse his reforms, according to a report from Reuters.

The only good news was the Czech Communist party, the KSS, were kicked out of parliament for having far too few votes.

From a Distributist standpoint, the current elections do not bode well at all.

1) None of the new parliament's six parties seem committed to expanding support for worker-owned and managed cooperatives into the industrial and financial sectors.

2) Small farmers and farmer co-ops are now threatened under EU regulations to merge with European agribusinesses or be disolved, as was may still be happening in Poland and France.

3) Support for social policies that defend abortion and the Sexual Revolution and oppress homeschoolers may still be in place.

4) Neither major party even considers permanent withdrawl from the UN, the EU, NATO and the WTO, reducing the nation's political sovereignty.

5) And both Fico and Dzurinda are committed to make the Euro Slovakia's currency by 2008, reducing the nation's economic sovereignty.

So to Distributists, it is a different boss but the same racket. Pray for Slovakia.