Slovakia’s opposition parties would secure a parliamentary majority, according to the April poll by NMS agency.

The country’s largest opposition party, centrist Progressive Slovakia (PS), leads the polls with 23.2%, ahead of Smer of the populist Prime Minister Robert Fico with 19.9%.  

Smer’s key ruling coalition ally, conservative centre-left Hlas (8.5%), fell behind the non-parliamentary neofascist Republika (9.2%), while the junior coalition party, ultranationalist SNS (1.9%), sits deep below the 5% parliamentary threshold.

Opposition parties, Christian democratic KDH (6.9%), right-wing populist Slovakia (6.8%) and neoliberal SaS (6.5%), would all re-enter the parliament and together with PS would combine for a majority of 80 in the parliament of 150.  

The poll figures suggest that the March reshuffle in the left-right cabinet of Prime Minister Robert Fico, whereby the populist leader reconstructed a 79 majority did not boost the cabinet’s faltering popularity.

Fico has reinvigorated the mass protests he is facing in Slovakia as his reshuffled cabinet approved a Russian-like foreign agent draft bill targeting NGOs last week, prompting thousands to march in protest across the country’s cities and towns.

In his latest stepping up of rhetoric against NGOs, Fico likened the situation in Slovakia to Serbia.

“The EU needs an honest discussion about democracy. As well as about what is happening in Slovakia or Serbia,” Fico headlined his latest social media post on April 9.  

“Various strange NGOs financed from Dutch accounts make up reasons for protests every week,” Fico wrote, linking to his previous rhetoric of alleging a "coup" was unfolding in Slovakia, involving NGOs, funding from abroad, opposition, as well as Georgian pro-Ukrainian units and Czech media.     

Fico concluded his post by referring to Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić, whose Serbian Progressive Party is facing the country’s largest mass protests since the fall of pariah president Slobodan Miloševič, stating “hold on, Aleksandar.”  

Fico also wrote that “because democratically elected President A. Vučič is sovereign and does not bow to Western dictate, he faces the wrath of Western gods,” adding that “if the EU was just, which it is not, Serbia would become its member, as it is ready for it.”

In a separate development, the Slovak parliament approved continued debate of the government-backed constitutional changes, which are poised to result in the enshrining of two genders – a man and a woman – in the Slovak constitution, pushed as part of Fico’s hardening of his national conservative rhetoric.