Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Direction – Social Democracy" in English language version.
In 1999, he became chairman of the left-wing nationalist Smer (Direction) party, where he has been a leading figure ever since.
In his fourth tour of duty as PM, the leftist-populist Smer party boss is expected to travel to this week's meeting of EU leaders in Brussels.
Fico's leftist, populist SMER-SSD (Direction-Slovak Social Democracy) struck a deal last week with the centre-left HLAS (Voice) and nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS) to form a coalition that will have 79 out of 150 seats in parliament.
He was Slovakia's representative to the European court of human rights from 1994 to 2000 and set up his centre-left Smer-SD party in 1999 after being turned down for a ministerial post by the Democratic Left, the Communists' political heirs.
