The Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fico, 59, will continue his recovery at his home in Bratislava, where he was transferred on Thursday afternoon from the Banska Bystrica hospital, where he was admitted on May 15 after being shot, this reported. Friday the health center. “The Prime Minister is currently in home care,” said the FD Roosevelt University Hospital in Banska Bystrica on the social network Facebook. Fico, a populist and nationalist, lives near the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the Kalvária neighborhood, which is part of the historic center of Bratislava.
The prime minister was transferred by medical helicopter from the hospital in Banska Bystrica (center of the country), where he was, to the capital, 200 kilometers to the west. According to the doctors, Fico’s own wish was fulfilled, as he began eating food on Wednesday. The Slovak leader was in critical condition due to the wounds caused after being shot in the small intestine, which was perforated in five places.
The director of the health center, Miriam Lapuníková, indicated that a “long rehabilitation” awaits the patient. Fico needed a five-hour operation as soon as he entered the hospital, and a second intervention two days later, according to Reuters. The aggressor, a 71-year-old man, with a pacifist past and who disagreed with the Executive’s measures, shot the left-wing populist politician with a 9-caliber CZ 75 pistol after a Council of Ministers in the town of Handlová, in the center of Slovakia, on the 15th.
Slovakia, a country of 5.4 million inhabitants, has been going through a period of extremely aggressive political environment for years that not even the assassination attempt has been able to appease. Robert Fico’s political career is marked by another shooting, the one that occurred on February 26, 2018, when journalist Ján Kuciak, a reporter who was investigating links between the Italian ‘Ndrangheta and senior government officials, was found murdered along with his girlfriend. . Slovak society then rose up against the atmosphere of impunity and corruption that prevailed in the country and forced the resignation of the then prime minister, Robert Fico.
Five years after his resignation, Fico won the October 2023 elections. He did so with a more radical version of himself, after an extremely toxic campaign that deepened divisions. He came to power attacking liberalism and criticizing everything that comes from the West, including the United States, NATO and the EU. He pointed to the war in Ukraine as the cause of the economic difficulties suffered by Slovaks.
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Just fifteen days ago, after the attack, a radical sector of the populist coalition government further inflamed the situation by blaming the press and the opposition for the tension. There were attempts to calm the waters. Like that of the president, the progressive Zuzana Caputová, in office until June, and the elected head of state, Peter Pellegrini – Fico’s ally – who summoned all political forces to the presidential palace. But his proposal failed. And the country remains polarized.
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