The attempted assassination of the Slovak Prime Minister deepens the division of an already deeply polarized Slovakia. And the focus of tension, to attack or defend it, falls on the figure of the prime minister, Robert Fico. In Slovakia, people are either for him or against him, and on the street, accusations about who is to blame for the assassination attempt have flown in both directions. His supporters, including very prominent members of his party and his government partners, point to the opposition and the liberal press. Faced with the spiral that takes tension to dangerous levels, the outgoing president and the head of state elected last April – from rival parties – wanted to stage a call for calm this Thursday together with some ministers. The culprit they point out is hatred. It’s probably the only thing everyone agrees on.
This Wednesday, Slovakia experienced one of the most tense and delicate moments in which a country can plunge, when a man shot the prime minister, the populist Robert Fico, and left him between life and death. Everything was confusion and information about the health status of the leader and the identity of the aggressor was arriving in pieces. Members of the Smer party, Fico’s party, and SNS, his ultranationalist partners in the coalition government, quickly pointed their accusing fingers at the media and the press. SNS leader Andrej Danko even spoke of the start of a “political war”, firing off rhetoric when containment was most necessary.
The vice president of Parliament Lubos Blaha informed the Chamber, meeting in a parliamentary session, of the assassination attempt against the head of the Government. The politician, very close to the prime minister, immediately blamed the opposition: “This was your doing,” he told them. “Robert Fico is fighting for his life because of your hatred,” he stated, and continued with his story, which is reported in the national media: “The guilt of the progressives and the liberal press will never be cleared up. Which politicians are going to go to rallies now? You have turned us into targets.”
In a media appearance, Danko, also vice president of Parliament, told journalists: “Are you happy now?” The far-right politician also referred to the informants as “disgusting pigs” in the same intervention in which he considered the attempted murder of Fico as the start of a “political war.”
The main opposition party, Progressive Slovakia (PS) has condemned in absolute terms the attack on the prime minister. The formation has suspended its electoral campaign for the European elections and the protests against the Government that they usually call. Michal Simecka, the leader of the PS, has described the assassination attempt as an “attack on democracy” and has appealed to end “the spiral of attacks and accusations.”
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The media have also rejected in unison, with a joint statement, the assassination attempt. After the journalists were pointed out, they have been included in the groups considered at risk for whom the Government is going to increase security. The public radio and television station RTVS, the most recent target of the controversial measures of the Fico Executive, has also announced that it is going to reinforce the security of its staff and its facilities.
As a sign of the climate of mistrust that reigns, an analyst usually willing to speak to the press refused to do so on this occasion with names and surnames. But privately, in his office in Bratislava, he believed that the country “may explode.” “It’s not something new; “This country has been exploding for years,” he added in reference to the levels of hate triggered by social networks. He did not justify the attack on the prime minister, but recalled that his figure has been fundamental in the radicalization of the country and in the deepening of polarization.
Slovak political scientist Peter Spác of Masayarik University in the Czech Republic recalls in an email exchange that he has been warning for some time that “the continued spread of hatred by many politicians would at some point lead to some kind of explosion.” “To be clear, Fico is among those to blame for the growing polarization,” he stresses. After the attack on the prime minister, he sees two possible scenarios. The first, that the parties lower the tone of the public conversation, although the reactions of Blaha and Danko, along with some other senior officials, cast doubt on that option. The second possibility is that members of the Government use the assassination attempt to show the media and the opposition as a threat to society that must be controlled.
Among those trying to promote a message of national reconciliation is Zuzana Caputová, the country’s first female president, who refused to run again in the elections last March and April after receiving death threats – along with constant disqualifications from Fico, who He called her a foreign agent in the service of the United States. She already tried to calm things down on Wednesday with several messages asking for calm and this Thursday she tried again together with the person who will replace her as head of State, the leader of Hlas, Peter Pellegrini, the other partner in the Government coalition. Both have invited the leaders of all parties with parliamentary representation to the presidential palace to try to build bridges.
“What happened is an individual act, but the tension of the situation is a collective effort,” Caputová stated in an appearance alongside Pellegrini. The pro-European and environmentalist president has called on politicians to control their emotions when they hold public office. “We have to be better people.”
The Ministers of Defense, Robert Kalinak, and the Minister of the Interior, Matus Sutaj Estok, have also addressed together the Slovaks to ask them for serenity and to avoid hate speech or justification of violence. After the Security Council meeting this Thursday, Kalinak appealed to “address the causes that gave rise to this evil.” Perhaps Slovak democracy “must learn to walk again and tolerate different opinions” after the attack, the minister stressed.
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