Slovakia's election winner to form four-party government

The chairman of the winning party in Slovakia's parliamentary election told the country’s president on Saturday that he has agreed to form a coalition government with three other parties.

Igor Matovic and his centre-right populist opposition group Ordinary People captured 25 percent of the February 29 vote. It has 53 seats in the 150-seat parliament.

President Zuzana Caputova asked Matovic on March 4 to lead the efforts to create a new government.

After their meeting on Saturday, Matovic said he presented the details of his Cabinet to the president. It is not clear when the new government might be sworn in.

Caputova didn’t immediately comment. Matovic and Caputova are scheduled to meet again on Monday.

Matovic agreed to govern with the pro-business Freedom and Solidarity party; the conservative For People, a party established by former president Andrej Kiska; and We Are Family, a populist right-wing group that is allied with France's far-right National Rally party.

The victory for Ordinary People ended the reign of a long-dominant but scandal-tainted leftist party and analysts said that showed a strong desire by voters to end corruption.

The Smer-Social Democracy party led by the sitting prime minister, Robert Fico, came in second with 18.3 percent, or 38 seats. Fico’s party was damaged by political turmoil following the 2018 slayings of an investigative journalist and his fiancee.

The pro-western Matovic, 46, has made fighting corruption and attacking Fico the central tenets of his campaign.