Bugar: Most-Hid Might Still Form Election Party with SMK

Bratislava, October 8 (TASR) – Most-Hid won’t contest the upcoming parliamentary election in coalition with ethnic-Hungarian SMK, although the idea of having representatives of both parties run on a slate of a special election party like the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) of 1998, which later transformed into SDKU-SD, hasn’t been ruled out, Most-Hid leader Bela Bugar told Tablet.tv in an interview on Tuesday.

When told that there’s probably not enough ethnic Hungarian voters in Slovakia to support the election of two ethnic parties to Parliament, Bugar responded that there are two options for Most-Hid.

The first is to run on its own while attempting to reach out also to other minorities, such as Roma and Rusyns, as well as the majority Slovaks and galvanise all party functionaries to action at all levels.

“We clinched deals with some Roma representatives, Hungarian Christian-Democratic Alliance and some other independent figures. We have a great number of active Rusyns. As long as all party representatives do their jobs – both those in Government posts, not only ministers but also state secretaries, lawmakers and mayors – we’ll make those five percent and then some even on our own,” declared Bugar.

However, Most-Hid is aware of running the risk of having ethnic votes squandered in case of failure, which is why the party still hasn’t fully abandoned the idea of co-operation with SMK, albeit not on the basis of a classic coalition.

“We would need to garner not five but seven percent to make Parliament as a coalition. That’s too much of a senseless gamble. The second option is thus to forge partnership with SMK and embrace the creation of an election party,” claimed Bugar. He explained that candidates of both parties would run on a slate of a third, election party and thus need to garner only the standard five percent of the vote.