d on Tuesday showed candidates supporting the new four-party coalition government had taken six of the eight main towns, including the capital Bratislava and Slovakia`s second city, Košice. Turnout, at 53.95 percent, was well below the 84 percent of the population which voted out Mečiar`s government in the general election. Mečiar`s Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) remained the single most powerful party, but combined opposition support was stronger. "The results of parliamentary elections are very close to what we saw in the communal elections now," Eduard Baranyi of the Central Electoral Commission told journalists at a news conference. At the general election the anti-Mečiar coalition pledged to use its massive majority to reform the country`s ailing economy and forge closer ties with the West. Precise comparisons with voting patterns at the general election are not possible because of the large number of independent candidates at the local level. Many candidates allied to the government did not run as members of parties actually represented within the governing coalition. The coalition, which has yet to implement planned austerity measures, is made up of the Party of the Democratic Left (SDL), the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK), the Hungarian Coalition (SMK) and the Party of Civic Understanding (SOP). The opposition is made up of HZDS and the Slovak National Party (SNS). Of the 35,465 communal deputies elected, HZDS took 8,140, the SDL 5,793, the Christian Democrats (allied to SDK) 4,276, the SMK 3,773, independents 3,177, SNS candidates 2,136 and SOP 1,041. Only results for those parties which gained more than 1,000 seats were released.