Slovakia's Prime minister Robert Fico waits ahead of a meeting of the Visegrad Group held in Bratislava June 2015 | Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images Opinion Vote here for cronyism, against liberal democracy Slovakia’s election reverberates beyond its corner of eastern Europe.

Slovakia's election on Saturday will, in its own way, shape Europe's future.

As the Continent grapples with multiple crises, Slovakia takes the helm of the Council of the European Union in the second half of 2016. In that role, Slovakia will have a dose of agenda-setting powers and will have to play the role of an honest broker between different member states and European institutions, which often find themselves at loggerheads.

Another debt crisis can easily break out on the eurozone’s peripheries. And, depending on the outcome of the British referendum, the Slovak presidency might oversee the beginning of exit negotiations with the U.K. under Article 50. The Slovak presidency promises to be much more meaningful than the usual parade of national peacock strutting, as most others are.

Fico plays the Muslim card. Many Slovaks are more concerned about sorry state of the public sector.

The election will also determine the character of the Visegrád group, comprising Slovakia, Czech Republic, Poland, and Hungary. A strong mandate for Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico will reinforce the current drift of Visegrád countries toward a cohesive bloc that's toying with illiberal democracy as an alternative to the Western liberal model. This political trend is sharpening divisions between “new” and “old” Europe — most importantly on the refugee issue — and playing right into the hands of Russian President Vladimir Putin who's looking to exploit cracks in the EU.

According to opinion polls, Fico’s party, Smer (meaning “Direction” in Slovak), leads by a wide margin. Although the party is nominally committed to social-democratic principles, since the summer of 2015 Fico has styled himself as an uncompromising defender of Slovak interests against the diktat of Brussels and its so-called unelected multiculturalist elites. “We have to prevent the emergence of a compact Muslim community in Slovakia,” he said, promising that the intelligence services were keeping an eye on “each and every Muslim.”

Smer may be overplaying its refugee card. With the exception of 149 Iraqi Christians who arrived in the fall, Slovakia has seen no influx of refugees. Slovakia’s own Muslim community, comprising some 5,000 people, many of whom arrived in the 1980s, is well-integrated and at very little risk of radicalization.

If immigration and multiculturalism are abstractions in the minds of Slovaks, most of them have direct experience with the sorry state of the country’s public sector. In spite of the country’s undeniable economic dynamism, the public sector, including health care and education, has seen little systemic change since 1989.

At the beginning of this year, nurses at several large hospitals resigned en masse and teachers went on strike. The nurses and teachers demanded not just higher salaries but reforms of their sectors. Health and education are cursed with cronyism and corruption.

The Visegrád group is becoming a cohesive bloc of illiberal, anti-EU, nationalistic governments.

Hardly a week passes without the discovery of yet another suspicious government purchase or wasteful subsidy, from overpriced hospital equipment to financial aid to no-name universities to support unspecified “research.” Such deals are typically awarded in procurement tenders tailored to the winning applicant.

Although cronyism and diversion of public funds are not distinctly Slovak problems, the inflow of billions in EU aid has created a powerful party-government-business complex devoted to sucking away what it sees as "free" money with little oversight.

Another four years for Smer, either on its own or in a coalition with Slovak nationalists of the Slovak National Party (SNS), appears to be the most likely outcome of the upcoming election. Still, Fico’s triumph is not a foregone conclusion.

With a few days left until the election, Smer’s campaign is becoming tiresome for voters, and the party isn’t coping well with accumulating corruption scandals. In addition to stopping non-existent Muslim immigration, Fico has vowed to protect Slovakia’s water resources by imposing a ban on the export of water, looking increasingly desperate in his quest to win a third term.

Viable alternatives to Fico exist. One of them is the center-right Sieť (“Network” in Slovak), a party built by Yale-trained lawyer and former presidential candidate Rado Procházka.

There is also Most–Híd (“Bridge”), a party that unites center-right ethnic Hungarians, as well as Slovaks, under the leadership of Béla Bugár, a popular political veteran; or the libertarian Freedom and Solidarity (SaS).

If these parties do reasonably well, they could form a reformist, pro-Western coalition. Failing that, Smer might still have to pick one of them as a junior coalition partner instead of Fico’s natural allies, the nationalists. That would provide a much-needed counterweight to his populist instincts and affinity for the Kremlin.

The alternative — a cohesive bloc of populists and nationalists in power in Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia — bodes ill not just for Slovakia, but the future of the European project.

Dalibor Rohac is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. Twitter: @daliborrohac.