Slovak pro-EU right set for power
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Vladimir Meciar: The EU and U.S. opposed his re-election
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BRATISLAVA, Slovakia -- Ruling Slovak centre-right parties have won enough votes in the country's election to form a pro-EU government if they team up with a new pro-business party, preliminary official results show.
Nationalist ex-premier Vladimir Meciar's HZDS party received the most votes in the general election on Friday and Saturday, with 19.5 percent of the vote.
But Meciar, shunned by the international community after his hard-line rule in the mid-1990s, appears short of allies to form a majority government.
Instead, a new broad rightist coalition is set to boost ties with the West and smooth Slovakia's path into the NATO military alliance later this year and the European Union in the next two years.
Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's SDKU won 15.1 percent, while current governing coalition partners the Christian Democrats scored 8.25 percent and the ethnic Hungarian SMK party polled 11.2 percent.
These three parties are likely to form a pro-European integration government with ANO, a new party set up last year by media mogul Pavol Rusko, which polled eight percent. That four-party alliance would hold 78 seats in the 150-seat parliament.
Meciar, a 60-year-old former boxer-turned-lawyer, took Slovakia to the brink of economic collapse and angered the international community during his 1994-1998 administration with a policy mix condemned by the U.S. and Europe as corrupt and xenophobic.
He was roundly criticised for trampling on human rights and flouting democracy in 1994-1998, prompting Western diplomats to warn that his return to power would leave Slovakia isolated.
