Slovak Premier Faces Coalition Challenge After Inconclusive Vote
- President to give task of forming cabinet to Fico on Wednesday
- SaS leader Sulik to start talks with five other parties
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The runner-up in Slovakia’s inconclusive elections vowed to negotiate with five other parties to create a ruling coalition that will exclude Prime Minister Robert Fico’s Smer party and avoid a new ballot.
After Smer won Saturday’s election with a smaller-than-predicted result, Fico postponed a meeting with President Andrej Kiska at which the premier will receive a mandate to start coalition negotiations until Wednesday, according to the president’s website. At the same time, the leader of the second-place SaS party, Robert Sulik, said he’d try to bring together six of the eight groups that made it into parliament to create a government.