To the government that prosecuted him, he was a “lone wolf”, a man in bad shape who represented no one but himself when he fired at least four shots into Slovak Prime Minister Roberto Fico.
But Wednesday’s assassination attempt spotlighted a much broader collective dysfunction in Slovakia. The Central European country’s deeply divided society and political culture has made violence by men, which authorities say is a unilateral act, a new club in which each side can outwit the other.
“We have a level of polarization in this country that has never existed before,” said Daniel Milo, a former government official who was in charge of tracking disinformation and now works for a technology company. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he added.
He said the COVID-19 pandemic has strengthened ties between previously fluid factions, turning them into hostile camps with little room for nuance. Roughly half of the population welcomed the vaccine and half rejected it. “It came down to, are you for it or against it? Do you believe it or not?” Milo said. Then, after the coronavirus outbreak, the Ukraine war broke out and became a source of further division.
The suspect was immediately arrested Wednesday and charged with attempted premeditated murder, but authorities have not released his name. Slovak news outlets, citing police sources, identified him as a 71-year-old pensioner with 1 yen for poetry and protests.
Each side of the political divide quickly used him as a foil, with their respective claims tailored accordingly. For Fico’s supporters who took to social media sites this week, the suspect was a carrier of the liberal virus that needed to be eliminated. The Prime Minister’s critics painted him as a right-wing extremist.
One particularly vicious government supporter demanded in Telegram messages that the government distribute guns and “then we will deal with the liberals ourselves.”
Interior Minister Matusz Stasi Estoque said: “We are on the threshold of civil war. The assassination attempt on the prime minister confirms that.”
“Many of you sowed seeds of hatred that turned into a storm,” the minister added.
Mr. Stagi Estoque oversees the security forces, including Mr. Fico’s security. He accepted the argument that lax security allowed the gunman to get so close and fire, but appeared to reject the idea. He said he saw no evidence of unprofessionalism, noting that the head of the department responsible for protecting senior officials was so close that “his entire suit was covered in blood.”
Andrea Dobyasova, a spokeswoman for the Inspectorate, which is part of the police force, said the agency had opened an investigation into the response of members of the security forces at the scene.
Officials from Fico’s ruling Smer party have effectively accused liberal journalists and opposition politicians of motivating the gunman to open fire.
Party vice-chairman Lubos Blaha said the opposition and the “liberal media” had “built a gallows” for the prime minister by “spreading too much hatred”. Rudolf Furiak of the far-right Slovak People’s Party, an ally of the government, said progressives and journalists “have the blood of Robert Fico on their hands.”
Such accusations fit into what Pavol Hardos, a political scientist at Comenius University in the capital Bratislava, described as a long-running campaign by Fico’s government to verbally attack not only its political opponents but also its legitimacy. Before he was shot Wednesday, Fico accused opposition leaders of being “worse than rats.”
Mr. Fico will overhaul the highly controversial judicial system to limit the scope of corruption investigations, restructure the national broadcasting system to root out what the government calls liberal bias, and crack down on foreign-owned non-governmental organizations. is pushing forward. He opposes military aid to Ukraine, LGBTQ rights, the power of the European Union, and supports Vladimir V. Putin’s regime’s friendly relations with Russia.
In all these ways, he mirrors his neighbor, the right-wing nationalist leader, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Opponents have accused Mr. Fico’s government of setting the stage for violence by escalating tensions, with some comparing him to Mr. Putin.
Jana Solivalska, a mother of three from Banská Štiavnica, a small town in central Slovakia, said her first reaction when she learned of Fico’s attack was “I was surprised it didn’t happen sooner.” He said it was. Slovakia is a “very polarized country,” she added. On the night of her attack, she said, her husband predicted that “a civil war might break out.”
On Thursday, the country’s outgoing president Zuzana Caputova stressed that the shooting was an “individual act” and said she would invite leaders of Slovakia’s main political parties to a meeting to “calm the situation.”
“We have our differences, but let’s not spread hatred,” she said in a statement alongside President-elect Peter Pellegrini.
Mr Pellegrini echoed his calls for less rhetoric, but called on the country’s political parties to either temporarily suspend campaigning or “calm down” in the run-up to next month’s European Parliament elections. He told a news conference that campaigning inevitably involves conflict and “strong opinions.”
“We don’t need any more confrontation,” he said.
Dominika Hajdu, a researcher at the Bratislava-based research group Globsec, said a major reason for the heated atmosphere was that the country of about 5.5 million people had been undergoing a “relentless political campaign” since the fall. Fico came to power in parliamentary elections in September. Since then, two presidential elections have been held in March and April, and now it is the European Parliament election.
“Campaigning, by definition, means more heat and more political attacks,” she says.
But Slovakia’s deep divisions also flow partly from its history, she added. For centuries it was under Austrian and Hungarian rule, then for 70 years as part of Czech-controlled Czechoslovakia, mostly under Soviet control. It remained a nominally independent state for six years as a puppet of Nazi Germany. Only in her 1993, after the fall of communism and the partition of Czechoslovakia, Slovakia became a fully independent country.
“The important national story is that we have always been oppressed by someone, whether by Austrians, Hungarians, Czechs, Soviets, anyone,” Hadju said. “We always feel like there are groups that are putting us at risk, and that leads to a very divisive style of politics.”
Mr. Fico, a combative veteran politician widely disliked by liberals in Bratislava but popular outside the capital, suffered at least one wound in the abdomen on Wednesday in what the government called a politically motivated assassination attempt. He was hit by one bullet and shot multiple times.
The shooting occurred after a meeting with local officials and supporters in Handlova, a town in central Slovakia that voted heavily for the party in September.
Officials announced Thursday that Fico was in stable condition after emergency surgery overnight. However, the deputy prime minister said at a press conference, “He is not out of danger for his life.” He said Mr Fico’s communication skills were “limited” and his recovery was facing “difficulties”.
Peter Pellegrini, the winner of last month’s presidential election, is an ally of Fico, who has framed his opponent, former foreign minister Ivan Korkok, as a warmonger plotting to send Slovak troops to Ukraine. Mr Colcoc insisted he had no such plans and that as president, a largely ceremonial post, he had no authority to send troops anywhere. But he struggled to counter the flood of disinformation targeted at him by pro-Russian websites and social media accounts.
Slovakia’s division is a particularly toxic online environment, where politicians like Che Guevara and Putin admirers like Blaha have amassed a large following by attacking domestic critics and Western leaders. has been supported by.
Fico began his political career more than 30 years ago as a member of the Communist Party, then became a champion of free markets and attracted billions of euros in investment from German car manufacturers before pivoting to right-wing nationalism. Ta.
His second term as prime minister came in the wake of massive street protests following the 2018 murder in Bratislava of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiance Martina Kusnirova, who were investigating government corruption. and resigned.
Many analysts at the time believed that this resignation marked the end of his long career.
But contrary to expectations, Fico returned to the premiership last year after his party narrowly won a closely contested parliamentary election. Pellegrini’s election this year as president strengthened his position, freeing him from the constraints imposed by Caputova, an outspoken liberal.
sarah cinklova Contributing reporting from Bratislava and Katarina Urban Lichterova from Banská Štiavnica, Slovakia.