Neo-Nazi Party Wins Seats in Slovakia Parliament in First

A synagogue in the city of Trencin, located near the western Czech border. Image by wikicommons

By JTA March 6, 2016

In the results of Saturday’s national elections announced Sunday, the People’s Party-Our Slovakia garnered 8 percent of the vote, three times more than expected, which is equal to 14 seats. The country’s parliament, the National Council, has 150 members.

Party chairman Marian Kotleba had led the neo-Nazi Slovak Togetherness-National Party, a banned party that organized anti-Roma rallies and was sympathetic to the Slovak Nazi puppet state during World War II, The Associated Press reported.

“We have elected a fascist to parliament,” Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajcak said of Kotleba, who has referred to NATO as a “criminal organization” and spoken out against the United States, the European Union and immigrants.

The Smer-Social Democracy Party of Prime Minister Robert Fico, which ran on an anti-migrant platform, took 28.3 percent of the vote, or 49 seats, which will require the party to form a coalition. In the previous election, in 2012, Smer took 44.4 percent of the vote, or 83 seats, and was not required to form a coalition.

In July, Slovakia assumes the rotating presidency of the Council of the European Union.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO