Neo-Nazi leader loses top regional post in Slovak vote

Slovakia’s neo-Nazi politician Marian Kotleba lost his job of regional governor while the ruling left-wing Smer party also took a thrashing in the Slovak regional election this weekend, final results show on Sunday.

Right-wing and centrist parties emerged as the winners in Saturday’s vote, the Slovak statistics office said, and they will now govern in five out of seven Slovak regions.

Smer, led by Prime Minister Robert Fico, will have regional governors in the remaining two regions, having lost four governor’s seats in the vote, in which turnout was just 30 percent.

Kotleba, head of the LSNS party, lost in his native central region of Banska Bystrica to independent candidate Jan Lunter, who was backed by coalition and opposition parties which joined forces against the far-right governor.

Only two of 336 LSNS candidates have been elected into regional assemblies in Slovakia, a eurozone member with 5.4 million inhabitants.

“The fascist party was defeated and it is also important that the political map of Slovakia has changed,” Grigorij Meseznikov, head of the Bratislava-based Institute for Public Affairs, a think tank, tells AFP.

Hostile to both the Roma minority and the established elite, Kotleba has spoken warmly about former Slovak president Jozef Tiso, who agreed to deport tens of thousands of Jews to Nazi Germany during World War II.

— AFP