Slovakia: Players in the June Election, Part 1

Lemuel of Deleted By Tomorrow begins a Slovak pre-election series – “the good, the bad, the ugly” – with “the bad.” Here's a sampling of one of them, Robert Fico, “leader of the main opposition party SMER – Social Democracy, a party poised to win the June elections”: “Forgive me for not being impartial, but he is also the living embodiment of all that I loathe and despise in politicians. He is a demagogue (I know, I know, every politician is one, but there are still degrees of decency even in this area), an opportunist posturing (I hope, for his own mental health that he isn’t sincere) as a leftwing raving loony moon-bat, he is a national socialist and a lawyer. A populist who once advocated the death penalty (knowing very well that in ze Modern Europe such a thing is verboten) pampering to the law, order and retribution electorate, but has tuned down such rhetoric lest it might get him in trouble with his new social-democratic pals in Europe. Now he just wants to overturn or revise most of the reforms (tax reform, social reform, pension reform) adopted in the last few years.”