* Results show centre-right wins majority and can oust Fico
* Fico says wants chance to try and form a government
* Budget, Hungary, corruption dominate vote
* For a TABLE with results, click on [
](Adds Fico comments, updates with nearly final results)
By Martin Santa and Michael Winfrey
BRATISLAVA, June 13 (Reuters) - Centre-right parties won a majority in Slovakia's election on Sunday, giving them a chance to oust Prime Minister Robert Fico with a coalition tasked to cut the budget gap and repair ties with neighbouring Hungary.
While voters chose the grouping of economic liberals whose reforms led Slovakia into the EU in 2004 and lured billions of euros in foreign investment, the leftist Fico remained the most popular politician in the euro zone's poorest country.
Loved for a tough leadership style favouring average Slovaks over big businesses, Fico won the biggest single share of the vote with 34.8 percent for his SMER party, according to results with 99.5 percent of polling stations counted.
But the results gave 79 of parliament's 150 seats to four centre-right and ethnic Hungarian parties.
The conservative SDKU, which introduced a flat tax rate, sold major state firms, and overhauled the pension and welfare sectors when it ruled from 1998 to 2006, was second with 15.4 percent of the ballot from Saturday's election.
It hopes to form a coalition with the Christian Democrats (KDH), the newly formed liberal Freedom and Solidarity party (SaS), and the ethnic Hungarian Most-Hid party.
Analysts say a centre-right grouping would be better placed to cut a budget deficit that hit 6.8 percent of gross domestic product last year to a target of 3 percent in 2012.
"Let me thank those who ... showed confidence that we can have a solution and kick-start Slovakia, halt the arrogance of power, and let me say the wish is that this country again is called the tiger of Europe," said SDKU leader Iveta Radicova. She said she had met the leaders of her party's potential future allies.
Fico said he would try to form a two-party government. The centre-right has vowed not to work with him, but traditionally the first chance goes to the biggest party and Fico said his party had won the right by winning the most votes.
"This is a number that gives us the right to accept a mandate from the president to form a cabinet," he told a news conference. "We are ready for that. It is tough to predict what comes next." He said SMER was also ready to go into opposition.
CONFRONTATIONAL STYLE
Business and the opposition accuse Fico, whose popularity was driven by a generous welfare agenda, of wasting public funds and polarising politics with a confrontational style.
Mainstream media, which Fico says are biased, have endorsed right-wing parties and called for a return to the type of reform that made Slovakia the European Union's fastest-growing member in 2007.
"Fico will try (to lure other parties) but the trenches have been dug so deep, although only over the past few weeks," said political analyst Samuel Abraham. "He has almost zero chance."
The junior ruling HZDS party of former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar, whose policies took the country into international isolation in the 1990s, did not win any seats.
The centre-right grouping is seen by analysts as the better force to fight corruption and improve frosty links with Hungary.
There have been strains over the rights of Slovakia's half a million Hungarian minority. Relations with Hungary deteriorated further after the far-right Slovak National Party joined Fico's government in 2006.
In Hungary in April, right-winger Viktor Orban won an election on a ticket that included fighting for the rights of Hungarian minorities abroad.
Slovakia's export-reliant economy, which shrank by 4.7 percent last year, has been recovering and the EU forecasts 2.7 percent growth this year, the bloc's fastest along with Poland.
Slovaks adopted the euro in 2009 and, with living standards at just 72 percent of the EU average, have questioned whether they should help richer debt-laden euro zone countries.
SDKU and SaS have said they would refuse to pay Slovakia's 800-million-euro share of the EU bailout for Greece. (Editing by Ralph Gowling)