Life-threatening gunshot wounds in the chest and stomach, hours of emergency operations whose positive outcome was not certain, now possibly a month-long recovery – Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico apparently only survived the assassination attempt on him on Wednesday (May 15, 2024) by a hair’s breadth. There has not been such a serious assassination attempt against a head of government of a European country for decades. The shock is now even greater, especially in Slovakia itself, but also elsewhere. The assassination attempt against Fico is the sad climax of increasing violence against politicians in many European countries.
In the politically deeply divided country of five million people, Slovakia, where an extraordinarily rough and violent tone prevails between the parties, almost all of Fico’s opponents and adversaries expressed their horror and dismay. The main opposition party canceled protests against Fico’s government’s planned overhaul of public broadcasting. President Zuzana Caputova, who is herself the target of numerous character assassination campaigns and is therefore soon giving up her political career, called on the political elite and the public in her country to renounce the climate of hatred and verbal violence.
The perpetrator’s motives and the circumstances of the crime have not yet been clarified. This much seems to be certain: Apparently it was a lone perpetrator. 71-year-old Juraj C. from the small town of Levice in southwest Slovakia worked for a security company and, according to reports in the Slovakian media, is said to have unsuccessfully sought a career as a writer and poet. Apparently he belonged to a right-wing writers’ association. In the past, he had apparently also posted content against migrants and Roma on social media. At the same time, he was apparently also an opponent of the right-wing nationalist government coalition under Prime Minister Robert Fico. Observers characterize the man as obviously frustrated and politically confused.
There was nothing to indicate such a crime against Prime Minister Robert Fico. But the attack is part of a long-standing history of serious violence in politics and organized crime in Slovakia and, to a certain extent, also part of a political culture full of deep faults. Slovakia never drew any final conclusions from this past.
After the peaceful dissolution of Czechoslovakia and independence in 1993, the country under Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar found itself for years at a crossroads between an autocratic regime with close ties to organized crime and a development based on the rule of law. This period was characterized by economic and privatization crime, brutal mafia murders and numerous serious attacks on critics of the Meciar system. The low point of the era was a power struggle in 1995 between Prime Minister Meciar and the then President Michal Kovac, during which the Slovak secret service had the President’s son kidnapped. Meciar was presumed to be the mastermind of the affair, but as a result of an amnesty he himself announced, it was never solved.
With Slovakia’s accession to the EU in 2004, this era seemed to have come to an end. It was also the time when Robert Fico’s great political career in Slovakia began. At that time, the lawyer Fico distinguished himself as a social democrat and fighter against corruption and rampant neoliberalism. Prime Minister for the first time since 2006, he was soon accused of being involved in corruption scandals, including the Penta Gorila affair, Slovakia’s largest post-communist corruption scandal, which concerned the influence of shady businessmen on Slovak politics.
The low point of Fico’s reign was the contract murder of journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kusnirova in February 2018 – Kuciak had been researching connections between politics and organized crime in Slovakia. Although Fico’s government was not directly involved in the murder, the prime minister had to resign at the time because Kuciak had uncovered connections between the Italian mafia and the Slovak government, including through an advisor and alleged lover of Fico. The alleged commissioner of the murder, businessman Marian Kocner, also maintained close ties to members of the government and high-ranking officials in the state apparatus. Overall, the image of Slovakia at that time was that of a real mafia state.
After the Fico era, the lawyer and anti-corruption activist Zuzana Caputova was elected president in 2019, and the following year a liberal-conservative reform coalition came to power. But Slovak society’s hopes for profound and lasting changes were ultimately not fulfilled; the reform coalition collapsed last year due to ongoing disputes. Fico returned to power after early elections in September 2023. Since then, he and his government have been primarily concerned with politically influencing the judiciary, stopping criminal proceedings for corruption and silencing independent media.
Fico transformed from a social democrat into a right-wing nationalist many years ago. Fico loves to criticize the European Union, liberalism, “LGBTQ ideology” and alleged enemies of “traditional values.” He represents pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian positions, for him his opponents are all “traitors”, he calls critical journalists “hyenas”, idiots” or “anti-Slovakian prostitutes”. In this way, Fico himself made a decisive contribution to a climate that horrified the President Caputova characterized it in a speech on Wednesday (May 15, 2024): “The hateful rhetoric we experience leads to hateful actions.” And she added: “Please, let us stop this!”
It is more than questionable whether Caputova will be heard. In initial reactions to the assassination attempt on Robert Fico, government members and party friends accused the opposition parties and journalists who do not conform to the government of being the intellectual masterminds behind the crime. It could be a sign that the coalition and especially Fico’s party SMER are using the attack as an opportunity to take even more rigorous action against critics.
One of those who is now bashing independent journalists is Slovakian Defense Minister Robert Kalinak. He has every reason to do so, because years ago independent media in Slovakia exposed his alleged involvement in state kidnapping: It was about the kidnapping of a Vietnamese businessman from Berlin via Bratislava back to Vietnam. As Interior Minister, Kalinak is said to have ensured in July 2017 that Trinh Xuan Thanh, who had previously been kidnapped from Berlin, could be brought to Vietnam on a Slovak government plane with fake documents. Kalinak has been a friend of Vietnam for a long time – among other things, during a visit in 2017, he initiated joint cooperation between Slovakian and Vietnamese companies in the security and armaments sector.
Author: Keno Verseck
The original for this article “Slovakia: Assassination attempt in a poisoned country” comes from Deutsche Welle.