BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovakia`s reformed communist Party of the Democratic Left will not join forces with Prime Minister Vladimír Mečiar after next week`s general elections, the official news agency TASR reported on Friday. Mečiar heads a three party populist-nationalist coalition government which has alienated many at home and abroad because of its confrontational style. Opinion polls suggest the prime minister will fail to garner enough votes to continue in government without the support of at least one of the four opposition parties. The Party of the Democratic Left (SDL) is seen by many in former communist Slovakia as a potential weak link in the opposition because of occasional past offers to support the government on specific issues such as privatisation. However, SDL vice chairman Pavol Kanis was quoted by TASR as saying it was now impossible to work with Meciar and his Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS). "(Mečiar) has buried any possibility whatever of cooperation with other political parties which have already refused to cooperate with HZDS," TASR quoted Kanis as saying. Slovakia was excluded from the first wave of countries invited to begin talks on European Union and NATO membership because of criticism that Mečiar`s government was undemocratic. The four parties in the opposition say they have agreed to cooperate after the September 25-26 elections but have not specified the form that that would take. Apart from the SDL, the opposition comprises the centre left Party of Civic Understanding (SOP), the free market Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK) and the ethnic Hungarian Coalition Party (SMK). The leader of the SOP, Rudolf Schuster, told Reuters on Thursday he was confident the opposition could work together on a programme of general principles. Apart from supporting EU and NATO membership all of the opposition parties want further privatisation although they disagree on how the process should be conducted.
Mečiar will quit politics if he loses next week`s general elections, the official news agency TASR reported him as saying on Friday. Mečiar, whose coalition parties are well behind the combined opposition in the opinion polls, added that he would not try to form a minority government if voters failed to give him a parliamentary majority. "I wouldn`t even serve as a doorman in a minority government."
