The attempted assassination of Robert Fico is fanning the flames of fear in Western democracies
Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s condition was on May 17 ‘still very serious’ two days after an attempted assassination admitted his beloved Soviet Union made “a mistake” in 1968 when sending in tanks to crush Czechoslovakia’s liberal reforms.
Slovakia’s longest-serving prime minister – having reinvented himself as a hard-right populist spitting out conspiracy theories and pro-Russian propaganda on– stopped military aid to Kyiv and allied with Hungary’s Viktor Orban to serve Moscow’s cause in the EU. Fico drove home his message with all the usual repulsive tactics from the populist playbook, such as targeting minorities and foreigners, while pledging to protect traditional values, restore political order, spend heavily on benefits and revive the economy. Once in office, he shut down the country’s anti-corruption agency and helped force out their first female president.
This post-communist country was bitterly divided, with people on all sides feeling betrayed by their leaders. And Fico – such a shameless character who had slid around the political spectrum from communism to centre-left pragmatism to nationalist extremism – was at the centre of all the fissures. Then in recent years came a churn of prime ministers, a poorly handled pandemic, a frightening war next door, soaring energy costs and a sluggish economy in a country formerly called the “Tatra tiger” for its economic growth.
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