Dissatisfaction with Slovakia’s current roster of pro-market, cultural liberal parties has produced yet another entrant: Liga-Civic Liberal Party: http://www.liga-ols.sk. Liga-OLS enters an crowded field, one already occupied by SDKU as well as the smaller, non-parliamentary Alliance of the New Citizen (ANO) and Slobodne Forum (SF).
Liga’s proto-platform places it squarely in the same political space as those parties but as with KDS in the pro-market, cultural consevative quadrant, it is not entirely clear how Liga will manage to differentiate itself and draw voters from existing parties. Pravda (anticipating this party’s creation) dealt with this question earlier this year in a brief article (here in Slovak, here in mediocre Google English translation. Unlike KDS, Liga at least began its public life with a logo and a website, but it will take a considerable effort and probably some good luck for the party to become prominent enough to siphon off more dissatisfied SDKU voters, especially while ANO and SF are trying to do the same thing. The Slovak socio-economic left was just as crowded by small parties around 2002 and has since seen a dramatic consolidation, but it had the advantage of “a Fico” and of somewhat less concern with cultural issues (which seem to have an asymmetrical impact, dividing the socioeconomic right more than the socioeconomic left).
More on this as we find out more. October and November polling updates coming soon.
