With 8 parties potentially entering Slovakia’s parliament there are 255 different coalition possibilities.  Fortunately, not withstanding Bismark’s aphorism that “Politics is the art of the possible,” there are quite a few coalition possibilities that we can exclude and in the end we can narrow down the possibilities to a relatively small number.  In the paragraphs [...]

This post comes a bit late because of changes to the pozorblog site but the month’s news is important enough to warrant an interim post. Things only changed a little this month. But small changes from one month to the next add up. And this month not all the changes are small. A few areas [...]

While I do not often write about particular political statements,  I am drawn to comment on today’s response by Robert Fico to Mikulas Dzurinda’s accusations that the government has failed to tap Eurofunds.  I translate Fico’s statement as follows (and would appreciate any better translation): My political conscience cannot be a person like Mikulas Dzurinda, [...]

Wikipedia hosts not only basic factual information regarding the recent elections but excellent analysis as well, particularly regarding the relative efficacy this time of preference voting with  3 out of 13 getting positions thanks to preference voting: Zaborska (KDH), Mikolasik (KDH) and Paska (SNS–though helped perhaps by his famous Smer namesake?).   Full information is [...]

A few initial thoughts (perhaps my only thoughts) on Slovakia’s Europarliament Elections. In general there are few surprises here:  Smer wins, SDKU follows at at a great distance, along with SMK and KDH.  Perhaps the only superficial surprise is the apparent reversal of numbers for SNS and HZDS, but even this is not particularly surprising [...]

I was intrigued to see stories about a recent Fico appearance, particularly one in HNOnline entitled, “Fico: There is an artificially created impression that every politician is a thief.” How did that impression get created?  I have a partial theory: The points Fico raises in the article are not at all inappropriate:  Politics is hard [...]