Bottom Line
- The attempted assassination of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico in May 2024 brought to a boil the country’s political polarization, caused in large part by Fico’s rhetoric and policies.
- The tragic violence in Slovakia was years in the making, born of an increasingly divided populace, led by politicians unable to compromise.
- While Fico’s shooting was a shock to the Slovak body politic, the country faces an unsettled future based on the inflexible reactions to the tragedy by much of the political leadership.
The recent assassination attempt of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico represents the nadir of a long-developing crisis of societal polarization in the small, Central European nation. As the first European Union (EU) president or prime minister seriously wounded in an act of
political violence in over twenty years, Fico is, in many ways, the prime instigator of the toxic political culture in Slovakia that contributed to the shooting.
Well before Prime Minister Fico was gunned down on May 15, 2024, in the village of Handlová in west-central Slovakia, the witches’ brew of hateful rhetoric demonizing political opponents had become standard fare on the country’s societal stovetop. Furthermore, since retaking power in late 2023, Fico's policies have evinced vehement resistance from the Slovak opposition who fear their nation is racing toward a Hungary-like illiberal democracy.
How, then, did an otherwise successful post-Cold War democracy in the center of the European continent descend into its current state of dangerous, tribal politics? Equally profound is the question of what the attempt on Fico’s life means for the country’s future. Can Bratislava’s disparate political camps mend fences in the wake of the assassination attempt?
Deepening Fissures
The logical starting point for an analysis of Slovakia’s current familial dysfunction occurred during Robert Fico’s last stint as the country’s prime minister. In February 2018, investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his girlfriend, Martina Kusnirova, were found murdered in the town of
Veľká Mača in western Slovakia. At the time, Kuciak had been close to completing a story on the activities in the Slovak Republic of Italian organized crime elements with ties to senior members of Fico’s government.
The brutal extermination of a government critic energized the Slovak opposition, resulting in sustained protests that quickly pressured Fico to resign his prime ministership on March 18, 2018. The following five years saw a succession of leaders in Bratislava—Peter Pellegrini, Igor Matovič, Eduard Heger, and caretaker Ľudovít Ódor, who steered the country on a generally pro-Western, moderate path.
Fissures deepened in Slovak politics in 2019 with the presidential election of Zuzana Čaputová, a dynamic, liberal lawyer and environmental activist who became the Slavic nation’s first female head of state. At the time, the Czech daily
Lidove Noviny, paraphrasing Slovak media, characterized her election as a new culture of decency in politics. Unfortunately, her rise to power unleashed a darker, more venal element on the Slovak right with politicians from both Robert Fico’s Smer party and the populist brethren in the Slovak National Party (Slovenská národná strana/SNS) routinely launching personal attacks on Ms. Čaputová. Some of the criticism bordered on slander with Fico in May 2023, accusing the president of being an “
American agent.”
The verbal assaults on Čaputová, which included death threats against her and her family, played a significant part in her decision in 2023 not to stand for a second term as president. Given her position as the leading figure of Slovakia’s pro-Western political establishment, this was a difficult pill to swallow for those opposed to Robert Fico and his populist tribe.
Russia-Ukraine War Escalates Partisan Divide
As it did in many of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) frontline states, the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 proved to be a turning point—German Chancellor Scholz’s “zeitenwende”—in Slovakia. Contrary to Poland, the Czech Republic, and the Baltic states, the war ripped asunder the already frayed fabric of Slovak political discourse, ultimately leading to snap elections in the fall of 2023.
While the caretaker government of Ľudovít Ódor supported EU and NATO policies in support of Ukraine in the lead-up to those elections, the campaign became, to an extent, a referendum on Bratislava’s position on the conflict. In that vein, Fico and his then-opposition comrades in Smer and SNS missed no opportunity to spread fear—particularly in rural areas—of Slovakia being dragged into the bloody carnage to the east.
Similarly, Andrej Babiš used the same scare-mongering tactics in the Czech presidential election campaign in early 2023. The Czechs rejected Babiš’s inflammatory rhetoric, electing instead
Petr Pavel, a pro-Ukraine former senior NATO official, to the presidency.
