BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — The center-right opposition has won a parliamentary election in Slovakia, nearly complete results showed today.
The Statistics Office said the governing left-leaning party of Prime Minister Robert Fico was the clear overall winner with 34.8 percent of the vote, or 62 seats in the 150-seat Parliament with votes from 5,900 of the 5,929 polling stations counted early today.
But three opposition parties could form a ruling coalition with an ethnic Hungarian party with a majority of 79 seats.
The result is a blow for Fico, who has promised to maintain the welfare state in contrast to the budget-cutting being implemented in several other European countries. But he called the result an “absolute success” that gives him a right to get a chance to form a government.
“If we fail, we will respect a right-wing government and become a tough opposition,” he said. The Associated Press
