[Politics] Slovakia at pivotal moment after Robert Fico shooting

[Wolf.17]

 

At the spot where a man tried to kill a prime minister there is a bullet hole and a small bloodstain.

Faint traces of a giant moment that has shocked Slovakia deeply. But the gunman’s target had seen this coming.

A month earlier, Robert Fico, Slovakia’s populist leader, was filmed predicting political tensions were so acute "a leading government politician" would end up getting murdered.

Then, the prime minister himself was shot. Hit four times in the stomach and arm at close range as he greeted supporters in a small former mining town.

The attempted assassination sprang from a toxic political climate, and threatens to deepen the polarisation in Slovakia still further.

Mr Fico’s warning of an imminent attack was no throwaway comment.

He repeated the thought to the head of Slovakia’s public broadcaster around the same time.

"I told him 'Prime Minister, things are not that bad'," RTVS boss Lubos Machaj recalls the conversation after an interview he conducted in April.

"He said he didn’t know, but he had warned his ministers to be careful."

It was around the time of Slovakia’s presidential elections, which were won by an ally of Mr Fico in the second round.

The prime minister’s own party, Smer, won the parliamentary vote the previous September.

For over six months, all agree, the political climate has been particularly hostile although the divisions date back to at least 2018, when a journalist investigating high-level corruption claims was murdered.

Mr Fico was forced to step down then, amid giant protests.

His re-election last year was a major comeback achieved on a platform that included promises to end military aid to Kyiv and veto Ukraine’s Nato ambitions, as well as other talk more reminiscent of Moscow than Brussels.

"I can only hope this tragedy will help to change Slovakia for the better" if tensions have now peaked, Mr Machaj told the BBC.

"But the first reactions of politicians are not suggesting that."

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c89z7ll532xo