Gorillas, flowers and scoundrels in Slovakia

Eastern Approaches | The Economist

TWO days before it holds a general election, Slovakia is immersed in gloom. Turnout is expected to drop to an all-time low thanks to widespread disenchantment with sleaze. 30% of Slovaks say they don't know who to vote for. Still, at least it's not like this any more:

The door opened, and something walked into my room out of the night. I didn’t see who it was until he was standing beside my bed, but the air changed when he entered and I felt malice like a chill on my neck. […] My visitor was wearing a jean jacket over a hooded sweatshirt and smelled of the outdoors. […] “Môžem vám pomôcť?” ["Can I help you?"] I asked. […] ”Pomoc?” Jean Jacket repeated, smirking over his shoulder. And then his fist shot out of its denim sleeve and cracked me in the head.

What reads like a cross between Edgar Allan Poe and "The Godfather" is actually an account of what used to be the reality of Slovak politics. This is the introduction to "Gorillas", a book by Tom Nicholson (a Canadian investigative journalist long resident in Slovakia) about the “mafiaisation” of the country's political elite. It describes a beating Mr Nicholson suffered in the 1990s at the hands of thugs probably commissioned by the Slovak secret service.

Gadfly hacks probably no longer need to worry about getting smacked in the face in their own homes. But Mr Nicholson's book, banned in Slovakia by a court, still provides a counterpoint to the received wisdom that the country completely turned a corner after booting Vladimir Mečiar, a strongman prime minister, from power in 1998.

True, under Mr Mečiar's successor, Mikuláš Dzurinda, Slovakia became known as the “Tatra tiger”. Bold structural reforms and a pro-European outlook delivered it first to the European Union and ultimately to the euro zone, alongside and even ahead of neighbours it used to lag behind.

Yet not everything changed. Corruption maintained a grip on public life. Mr Nicholson says his book traces the mechanisms by which graft has continued to thrive at the top of Slovak politics.

He agrees that Slovakia today is a tougher place for ne'er-do-wells. This is in part thanks to Iveta Radičová's outgoing centre-right government. Ms Radičová insisted, for instance, on the online publication of all public-procurement contracts. But few Slovaks are likely to remember this part of her government's legacy. Instead, they will recall the lingering stench of corruption.

In December a leaked file codenamed Gorilla, allegedly based on raw intelligence collected by the Slovak secret service in 2005-06 during a wiretapping operation of that name, led to allegations that various Slovak tycoons and foreign investors had paid bribes worth millions of euros to officials in Mr Dzurinda's second government to win public-procurement and privatisation contracts. (I wrote about the case in detail here.)

Another exposé, with the more decorous name "Sea-flower", surfaced in January. It raised suspicions that MPs had been offered bribes, in some cases worth hundreds of thousands of euros, in return for loyalty to the coalition in the messy vote for prosecutor-general in 2010. Sea-flower is based on transcripts of text messages between politicians and businessmen, and videos of some of their conversations. Police have launched an investigation.

Ms Radičová's government is a coalition of four centre-right parties. The steady drip of scandal has discredited most of them, as well as eroding the credibility of veterans like Mr Dzurinda, currently the foreign minister.

Gorilla may even deliver a fatal blow to Mr Dzurinda's Christian Democratic party, SDKÚ; it has plummeted in some polls to around 5%, the threshold for entering parliament. Ms Radičová, whose personal popularity revived SDKÚ's flagging appeal before the last election, in 2010, is quitting politics.

The plight of the centre-right has helped the social-democratic Smer (Direction) party of Robert Fico, which is poised to win a landslide victory on Saturday. Its ratings have slid slightly from its peaks at the height of the Gorilla scandal, but it is still hoping to win a parliamentary majority. Bar KDH, a second Christian Democratic outfit, no other party is certain to beat the 5% threshold.

KDH may join Smer in coalition even if Mr Fico wins enough seats to govern alone. As his many critics enjoy pointing out Mr Fico, who served a previous stint as prime minister between 2006 and 2010, will find it useful to be able to share responsibility for the unpopular measures the ongoing economic crisis is likely to force him to take. Growth prospects are dim and unemployment is way over the EU average. Mr Fico has already announced plans to abolish Slovakia's flat tax.

Investigations into Gorilla and Sea-flower continue. But many Slovaks have already made up their minds. Thousands of them have marched in the streets of Bratislava, the capital, and other cities, demanding that the “gorillas” in politics resign en masse. To make their point clear they lobbed bananas and eggs at parliament and government buildings (video here). Another protest, in nine cities across the country, is planned for tomorrow.

“The rejection of authority, tinted by anarchism, is reminiscent of 1968 in Western Europe,” says Martin Bútora, a former dissident and head of the Institute for Public Affairs, a Bratislava-based think-tank. Mr Nicholson, a hero to some of the protesters, agrees, describing the crowds as an odd fellowship of “direct-democracy activists, left-wing anarchists, liberals and right-wing extremists”.

The election commission has warned local committees that some provocateurs may try to pull stunts at voting stations on polling day. But Mr Bútora and Mr Nicholson agree that the awakening of previously dormant civil-society groups is good news for Slovakian democracy.

With Mr Fico set to win big, the fate of the centre-right is the more interesting story for many. Several new parties are running on a "clean hands" ticket, hoping to shove aside dinosaurs like the SDKÚ. Common People and Independent Personalities (OĽaNO) has emerged as a leader of this grouping. Polls suggest it may squeak into parliament.

99 per cent, another new party that some believe was behind the release of the Gorilla file in December, hoped to do the same. But despite having spent a fortune on its campaign it has run into administrative problems that may disqualify it from the election.

Mr Fico has reason to smile. His veteran centre-right rivals are tottering and the young guns are inspiring half-hearted grunts of support at best. But he has his own problems. His presumed election victory will grant Smer access to resources that will appeal to its backers. But it will also grant the party a large slice of state funding, which is allocated to parties per voter and per seat. That might tempt him to try to free himself from his financial sponsors after the election.

“He knows that these guys give you ten million and after the election, they come back for 100,” says Mr Nicholson. Most people think Mr Fico will repeat the mistakes of the centre-right. He will do better to learn from them.