Direction - Social Democracy
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Template:Politics of Slovakia The Direction - Social Democracy (Slovak: Smer - sociálna demokracia) party - before January 1, 2005 called Direction (the Third Way) (Smer (tretia cesta)) - , often just Smer, is a political party in Slovakia, led by Robert Fico. It is considered to be left from the middle.
It arose by splitting from the Party of the Democratic Left (Slovakia) (Strana demokratickej ľavice, SDĽ) in 1999 (Robert Fico being the most popular SDL member at that time) and quickly became one the most popular parties in Slovakia, while the popularity of the SDĽ, which was the successor of the original (i.e. pre-1990) Communist Party of Slovakia and was a government party from 1998 to 2002, was steadily decreasing.
As of 2004, it was the third largest party in the National Council of the Slovak Republic, with 25 out of 150 seats. As of early 2005, it was in the first place among all Slovak political parties in opinion polls with 30% support.
As from January 1, Smer merged with the small social democratic parties:
- Party of the Democratic Left (Slovakia) (see above)
- Social Democratic Alternative (Sociálnodemokratická alternatíva; a small modern-style social democratic party that split from the SDĽ somewhat later than Smer did), and
- Social Democratic Party of Slovakia (Sociálnodemokratická strana Slovenska; founded in 1990, the party became known under the leadership of Alexander Dubček).
The resulting entity was renamed Smer - Social Democracy.