Slovak election down to two

BRATISLAVA, Slovakia — A former authoritarian prime minister and his one-time ally will face each other in a runoff election that decides who will be the leader of Slovakia as it joins the European Union.

Vladimir Meciar’s first-place finish in Saturday’s presidential ballot comes only weeks before the country joins the European Union. The smooth-talking nationalist and his former right-hand man, Ivan Gasparovic, finished first and second, eliminating the pre-election favorite, Foreign Minister Eduard Kukan. The voter turnout was 48 percent.

Because no candidate won 50 percent of the total vote, Slovak election law calls for the top two candidates to meet in an April 17 runoff.

Mr. Gasparovic, who left Mr. Meciar’s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia in 2002, received a major boost when the largest opposition party, Smer, called for its voters to support him. The party has criticized every government move on reforms, arguing that the new laws have made poor Slovaks even worse off.

The two men capitalized on voter discontent over economic-austerity measures.

Saturday’s results were a rebuke to Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda, who managed to win EU membership for Slovakia after years of painful austerity measures and legal reforms. He had sought to improve the country’s image after Mr. Meciar’s authoritarian rule during much of the 1990s.

“Slovaks like to forget things,” said Peter Javurek, a leading commentator for the daily newspaper, Sme. “They forgot what Meciar as prime minister has done. They only remember the recent problems.”

In past months, the government has introduced a string of economic reforms, such as a flat tax on income, set at 19 percent. Others tax changes raised the price of basic foods. Social programs were cut, while unemployment stands at 16.5 percent.

Mr. Dzurinda’s Slovak Democratic and Christian Union Party was also at the heart of several scandals, including one involving its finances.

Anna Didakova, a retiree, was among the older people suffering economic hardships who voted to oust Mr. Dzurinda’s supporters.

“We, as pensioners, are living in difficult times,” she said, expressing confidence in both Mr. Meciar and Mr. Gasparovic. “They may not make things better, but they will not make things worse for us.”

Voter apathy also helped to push Mr. Meciar ahead, Michal Vasecka, an analyst with the think tank IVO, told the private TA3 television station. Few thought the results would be so close, and many figured they didn’t need to vote, he said

Mr. Meciar took the republic of 5.4 million people to nationhood in 1993 after Czechoslovakia split into the separate countries of Slovakia and the Czech Republic.

Until he was voted out of office in 1998, Slovakia was shunned by the United States and Western Europe because of reported human rights abuses and corruption.