Hlina visited churches, pubs, and cultural centers, shaked hands with people who were forgotten and brought a new fire to the party. A fire, one that consumes everything, because Hlina is an activist after all. He is fighting with his potential partners and talks to them only if it is really necessary. This disturbs his voters, who want to see cooperation in opposition. They don’t want their leader to be a man, who is writing controversial messages on Facebook, rather as someone who is building, uniting and has a clear political vision.
Hlina is in a demanding position. He has no personnel and experts, he cannot rely on his own men within the party structures. This became evident when the KDH was unsuccessfull in trying to find a suitable presidential candidate. While he claims the need for new faces, the voters want to see proven politicians. That caused conflicts before the nominations to the European eletions, when Anna Záborská, the current MEP of the party was forced out of the competition.
Hlina has to struggle with the conflict of ideological orientation as well. He wants to build a party which resembles the German CDU, but this is being seen by many supporters as “liberalization” and he is forced to compete with alternatives like the far-right. On the other hand, Andrej Kiska can gain another proportion of more liberally oriented Christian voters – and the return of the Christian Democrats to parliament could be delayed even further.
