Robert Fico warned weeks before the assassination that a politician could be violently attacked

Slovak society is in shock after a 71-year-old man fired five shots at Prime Minister Robert Fico as he greeted a small crowd after a meeting.

Some members of the coalition government immediately accused the opposition and the media of stoking anger against Fico, who was pushing through reforms that threaten media and judicial freedom.

Fortunately, Fico survived, but the consequences of the attack will still be severe. Many will remember the aftermath of another murder, that of reporter Ján Kuciak and his partner Martina Kušnírová in February 2018. It was this crime that set in motion the chain of events that would make Fico the politician he is today is.

Fico was also Prime Minister at the time. However, because the murder investigation brought him dangerously close to his political circles, he had to resign.

In a wave of public outrage, lawyer Zuzana Čaputová, who wanted to fight against political corruption, decided to run for president. In March 2019, to everyone’s surprise, she became the first female president in Slovak history. In the second round of those elections, she convincingly defeated the candidate from Fico’s center-left Smer Party.

Fico felt humiliated by his forced departure and Čaputová’s victory, but he had no plans to give up and retire from politics for good. He wasn’t even deterred when his own party split in two in 2020 and his former ally Peter Pellegrini led the splinter party Hlas SD.

Fico is the most experienced player in Slovak politics. He first became prime minister in 2006 and the current government is his fourth term in the office. Until 2018, despite some reservations, he was not considered a politician prone to extremes. He was even prime minister when Slovakia joined the euro in 2009.

However, he began to become increasingly radicalized during his years in opposition. He increasingly criticized the investigation into Kuciak’s murder, his country’s Western orientation and, above all, Čaputová as president.

Fico seems to have realized that his extreme views would cause him to lose the support of moderate Slovaks, but he has been careful not to anger either the far left or the far right. On the one hand, he has personal roots in the Communist Party, but on the other hand, he was careful not to anger the extreme right. This would close the door to the possibility of future coalition cooperation.

With his radical rejection of liberalism, Fico appeals to right-wing and left-wing extremists. In his opinion, the real extremists are those who advocate membership of the European Union, NATO and support for Ukraine.

Čaputová: an embattled president

In June last year, Čaputová announced that she no longer had the strength to continue in politics due to the threats and abuse she and her family were subjected to. She decided not to seek a second term as president. But the timing of their announcement, well before the presidential campaign and just months before the general election, appears to have been a strategic error.

Because Fico and Smer saw the president’s weakness as an opportunity, they were able to win the parliamentary elections and form a new government coalition with Pellegrini’s Hlas SD and the extremely nationalist Slovak National Party.

Even now that Fico is in the hospital, Čaputová remains in office. She is about to hand over her office to her successor – the same Peter Pellegrini, who was once part of Fico’s party. But he doesn’t start his role until June. Meanwhile, Čaputová must call for calm on behalf of Fico.

Fico’s election victory on an illiberal platform and his hostility towards the president with whom he was supposed to be working at the time of the attack, as well as the center-right party’s failure to offer an alternative, have led to unprecedented polarization of Slovak society.

Paradoxically, it was Fico who most accurately predicted the consequences of all this. In a speech posted on Facebook in April, he portrayed himself as a victim and said he would not be surprised if hatred against him led to the assassination of a government politician.

He survived, but Fico still became a martyr of “liberal tyranny” to his supporters – despite the fact that everyone, including all of Fico’s critics, unequivocally condemned the attack.

The murders of Kuciak and Kušnírová remain unsolved. Solving the case of the failed assassination of the Prime Minister will apparently be much quicker and easier as one man has already been charged.

However, it is more likely that efforts to transcend the political divide will dominate Slovak discourse for the foreseeable future. And this comes at the expense of a detailed discussion about what factors led to this crisis in the first place and how best to avoid it in the future.