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| Training at the border |
‘
We
protect Slovakia’
Voters
worry about jobs and health care — but the PM is obsessed with
non-existent migrants.
By BENJAMIN
CUNNINGHAM 2/10/16, 5:30 AM CET
BRATISLAVA —
Slovakia is hardly the destination of choice for migrants to the EU,
but that doesn’t stop Robert Fico railing against them and using
the refugee crisis to boost his chances of winning a third term in
next month’s parliamentary elections.
Fico is opposed to
opening the doors of the EU — and Slovakia — to migrants, playing
on fears fueled by the Paris terrorist attacks last November and the
sexual assaults on New Year’s Eve in Cologne by gangs of men who
included asylum seekers.
“The
only way to eliminate risks like Paris and Germany is to prevent the
creation of a compact Muslim community in Slovakia,” said
Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister from 2006 to 2010 and again since
2012.
“The idea of
multicultural Europe failed and the natural integration of people who
have another way of life, way of thinking, cultural background and
most of all religion, is not possible,” he said last month.
It’s part of an
attempt to harness anti-immigrant sentiment in a country of 5 million
people that didn’t experience the post-war mass migration that
dramatically altered the composition of many Western European
countries.
“The only way to
eliminate risks like in Paris and in Germany is to prevent the
creation of a compact Muslim community in Slovakia.” — Robert
Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister.
Fico has said his
government monitors “every single Muslim” in the country and that
“Slovak citizens and their security is of higher priority than the
rights of migrants.” The security threat for Slovaks is “immensely
high,” he warns.
With the general
election on March 5, Fico’s fixation on migrants has drowned out
most other issues. His center-left Smer party has released just five
sentences by way of an official election platform.
So far, it’s
working. Smer gained some 7 percentage points in opinion polls in the
second half of 2015, topping out at around 40 percent support at the
turn of the year. If that translated into votes on election day, it
would enable Fico to return at the head of another single-party
government.
Andrej Kiska, Fico’s
political foe who beat him in 2014’s presidential election, has
tried to push back.
“We have no
migrants,” Kiska told POLITICO. “Slovakia is not being touched by
this issue. We have our own problems and we should focus on them.”
No love of migrants
But Kiska is an
isolated voice. Every party running in the Slovak elections is wary
of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa, and Fico’s
language is in line with talk coming out of Warsaw, Budapest and from
Czech President Miloš Zeman.
Though nominally
left of center and a member of the Party of European Socialists bloc
in the EU, Smer (which means “direction” in Slovak) peddles an
amalgam of soft nationalism, social conservatism, corporatism and
state largesse.
The party has used
its outright parliamentary majority to increase the minimum wage,
grant free rail travel to more than half the country, offer
investment incentives to attract a new Jaguar Land Rover factory and
give more power to the intelligence services.
It hasn’t all been
plain sailing for the ruling party. Scandals in the health care
sector forced out Smer’s parliamentary speaker and health minister
in late 2014, then came a government bailout for an insolvent
construction company whose owner is closely allied to the party, all
of which undermined its support in opinion polls. For a while, Fico’s
prospects for re-election — at least without having to rely on a
coalition partner — looked in doubt.
Then came the
refugee crisis, late last summer. Fico went back on the offensive.
Slovakia voted
against other EU leaders at September’s summit when they decided to
allocate asylum seekers around the bloc, then challenged the
qualified-majority voting mechanism used to pass the scheme at the
European Court of Justice in December.
Those moves were
genuinely popular at home, even though Slovakia had only been asked
to take in 803 refugees. In one poll, 89 percent of Slovaks said they
were opposed to implementing the EU’s relocation policy.
Slovaks
are more concerned about unemployment, the economy, health care and
the cost of living than immigration, according to a Eurobarometer
poll conducted in November.
“When the
migration crisis hit, a lot of the leaders from the opposition
parties were not willing to stand up and talk about how we should
orient our country on the modern principles of Europe,” Kiska said.
“We are missing these new charismatic leaders who are able to bring
these voters from the center to the right together.”
The divided,
ineffectual opposition is no match for the Smer political machine and
Fico’s political savvy. Six weeks before the election, his
government sent checks to every household, ostensibly rebates for
savings accrued by low natural gas prices.
Unfounded fears
Fico has succeeded
in leveraging the migration issue despite Slovaks’ apparent lack of
concern about the issue. Unlike Hungary next door, Slovakia has not
seen its borders overrun with refugees making their way to more
prosperous EU nations.
Slovaks are more
concerned about unemployment, the economy, health care and the cost
of living than immigration, according to a Eurobarometer poll
conducted in November. Only 6 percent of Slovaks list terrorism as
one of their top two concerns.
“When you talk to
people, it is very difficult for them to define the reasoning behind
their fears,” said Grigorij Mesežnikov, president of the Institute
for Public Affairs in Bratislava.
Although Slovakia
doesn’t have many new migrants, it is no stranger to ethnic
tensions. More than 9 percent of the population is ethnic Hungarian,
and there have long been tensions with neighboring Hungary over their
status. Between 2 and 8 percent, depending on who is counting, are
Roma — a minority that, historically, has been subjected to fierce
discrimination.
There is no denying
that Fico’s confrontational approach to refugees has paid political
dividends so far. Other issues pop up, like labor unrest among
teachers and nurses and media allegations that two top government
ministers took part in a fraud scheme that cost the state €75
million in lost VAT revenues.
But there is little
sign of Fico going off-message. Last week, he held a news conference
telling teachers he would only talk with them after the election.
Meanwhile, Smer billboards across the country promise: “We protect
Slovakia.”
There
is a risk for Fico that he may have played the anti-immigrant card
too early.
“If, based on
temporary or permanent quotas, someone forces us to import 50,000
people with completely different habits and religions — and these
are mostly young men — I can’t imagine how we could integrate
them,” Fico told the Czech daily Pravo.
Still, there is a
risk for Fico that he may have played the anti-immigrant card too
early.
“Fico loves to
position himself as a defender of the country against external
threats,” said Milan Nič at the Central European Policy Initiative
think tank in Bratislava. “When you look at the polls it worked,
but people are already tired of it.”
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