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Slovak ruling party gets most votes but no majority
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Slovak ruling party gets most votes but no majority
AFP - 2 hours 44 minutes ago
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BRATISLAVA (AFP) - – Slovakia's ruling leftist Smer party came out on top in a general election but without enough seats to beat a centre-right opposition coalition, near-final results showed Sunday.
Of six parties which obtained enough votes to win seats in parliament, Smer, led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, took 34.87 percent of the vote, gaining 62 seats in the 150-seat parliament, the statistics office said, with 99 percent of votes counted.
But Fico's future in power appeared tenuous as centre-right opposition parties appeared to have mustered a tight 79-seat majority, the results showed.
"We are ready to try to form a government, to be a dominant political power for the next four years," Fico told reporters early on Sunday, calling the almost 35-percent support "an overwhelming victory".
"But we are also ready for the alternative of a centre-right government and we will be a tough opposition... so thorough that we don't give them more than a year," added Fico.
Smer, together with its current coalition partner Slovak National Party (SNS), got 71 seats in the parliament.
Fico's other coalition partner, the People's Party-Movement for Democratic Slovakia (LS-HZDS), failed to pass the five-percent vote threshhold required to enter parliament.
A centre-right coalition would comprise the liberal SDKU-DS and the Freedom and Solidarity (SaS), the Christian Democrat KDH and the ethnic Hungarian party Most-Hid.
The four parties had promised austerity steps before the election to get the economy, which has been battered by the global crisis, back on track.
Turnout in the vote reached 58.8 percent, statisticians said.
With the Greek debt crisis fresh in mind, Slovaks were voting on the future of generous social benefits and extra pensions introduced by Fico's government, with unemployment reaching 12.25 percent in May.
The liberal SDKU-DS, the main opposition party in the outgoing parliament, has promised to consolidate public finances without raising taxes or cutting social benefits.
"Slovakia chose the path of responsibility that will help solve the problems of the country," SDKU leader Iveta Radicova told journalists.
"We will turn Slovakia into Europe's tiger again," she said.
Radicova, who may become the country's first female prime minister, ruled out talks with Smer, saying the parties' programmes did not have anything in common.
Smer wanted to maintain social benefits and boost pensions despite the battering the country's economy has taken from the global financial crisis.
The ethnic-Hungarian party Most-Hid ("bridge" in both languages) -- representing the country's 500,000-strong minority -- looked set to replace the nationalist SNS party in the future government.
Its success might calm tense relations between Slovakia and neighbouring Hungary, which were strained after the SNS became part of the governing coalition in 2006.
More than four million voters on Saturday chose from among 150 representatives for the single-chamber parliament, from some 2,400 candidates from 18 parties.
The vote was supposed to close at 22:00 pm (2000 GMT) but was extended by 30 minutes after a thunderstorm caused power outages in five municipalities in western Slovakia.
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