Slovakia's opposition party wins parliamentary elections

Slovakia's leftist opposition Smer party has won Saturday's parliamentary elections with over 29 percent of votes, preliminary results showed on Sunday.

Smer, led by Robert Fico, won the legislative elections with 29.14 percent of the votes, while Prime Minister Mikulas Dzurinda's Slovak Democratic and Christian Union came as the second with 18.35 percent, the results showed.

However, Smer fell short of an outright majority, which means it has to strike a coalition to win a majority in the 150-seat parliament.

Economic reforms advanced by Dzurinda during his past two terms boosted the east European country's entry into NATO and the EU in 2004, as foreign investment flooded in and the economy chalked up a robust growth of 6.1 percent in 2005.

However, the country's free-market economy has high unemployment and the gap between the rich and poor is widening.

Dzurinda's biggest competitor, Fico, has vowed to roll back many of the reforms and restore social benefits.

Source: Xinhua