The Ordinary People party (OLaNO) has won a resounding victory in Slovakia’s parliamentary elections. This is a centre-right party focused on fighting corruption. The election campaign was dominated by public anger over the 2018 murder of an investigative journalist, Jan Kuciak, and his fiancée, Martina Kusnirova. The result has unseated the centre-left Smer-SD party, which had dominated Slovak politics.
Behind the victory of the new party is 46 year old businessman Igor Matovic. He poses as a simple “man of the people”. His party slogan was “Let’s beat the mafia together”. After exit polls, Matovič said that the people who voted for his party were people who did not trust the state and saw corruption as the most important issue in the country. Slovakia is yet another European country taking a more centre-right turn, which may also be the result of growing anti-migrant trends in the Old Continent.