The Attempted Assassination Of Robert Fico And The Impact on Slovak Politics.
Robert Fico is a politician belonging to the Smer-SD Party. He is Prime Minister of the Republic of Slovakia from 2023, having served in…
Robert Fico is a Slovak politician and the founder of the Smer-SD Party. He is also Slovakia’s longest serving Prime Minister since its independence in 1993, having served in the role for multiple terms between 2006 and 2010, between 2012 and 2018 and once again from 2023. He has been described as a populist and is often compared to Victor Orban of neighbouring Hungary. Smer-SD was founded as a left wing party but has adopted certain right-wing values with regards to immigration. Smer campaigned in 2023 on a pro-Russian and Anti-American left-wing populist platform. It promised to halt arms deliveries to Ukraine immediately and made good on this promise. On May 15, 2024, Fico was shot in the stomach 4 times while in the town of Handlova some 140 kilometres north of the Capital, Bratislava. Fortunately, he survived the accident and was rushed to a hospital in the nearby town of Banská Bystrica immediately.
Although in a critical condition, he is expected to survive the incident. The suspect has been charged with attempted murder. The potential political repercussions of this incident on Slovak politics, and European politics in general, are enormous. There were a lot of measures that the Smer Government wanted to push through, including replacement of the public broadcast service RTVS with a new national broadcast service that the government would exercise greater control over. A lot of Slovaks had protested against these measures. This time, the attempted assassination might just give Smer and its allies enough political leeway to push a lot of these changes through. Assassinations often lead to an undermining of the democratic nature of a state’s polity. The executive tends to centralise more power onto itself and weaken other branches of the government. In the context of Slovakia, this may mean that there could be political crackdowns on the opposition in the country. While the motives of the would-be assassin are not clear, they could be used by Smer to push through certain measures that they want to effect, like pushing for an end to EU Sanctions on Russia, vetoing Ukraine’s accession to NATO, or speeding up the process of shutting down RTVS. It might lead to a hardening of Smer’s anti-EU, anti-US, pro-Russia stance that it has been advocating for. Whatever the consequences, Slovak and European Politics seem to be heading towards a dark place, at least in the short term.