Team News Riveting
The four-time Prime Minister of Slovakia Robert Fico, 59, was shot after today’s government meeting in Handlova, a mining town in the Trencin Region.
The incident took place on Wednesday afternoon. A shooter fired at the premier outside the cultural house, where the government held a meeting. Multiple gunshots were heard during Fico’s conversation with his supporters outside the building. Fico then fell to the ground.
Multiple shots were fired at Fico, 59, RT reported, citing Slovakia’s local news channel. According to reports, he was also shot point-blank. The Prime Minister collapsed and was carried to a car by his security personnel.
Fico was shot “multiple times” and his condition is “life-threatening,” the Prime Minister’s office announced on Facebook. He is currently being airlifted from Handlova to a hospital in Banska Bystrica as flying him to Bratislava would take too long, it added. The next few hours will decide whether he survives, the Prime Minister office said.
A Slovak Interior Ministry spokesman confirmed it was an assassination attempt.
Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has taken his central European country to a neutral stance on the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, was shot today as he interacted with the public after a government meeting, and his condition is “life-threatening”, reports said.
Who is Fico?
Born into a working-class family on 15 September 1964, Fico – a lawyer by profession – began his political career with the Communist party shortly before the 1989 Velvet Revolution that led to the breakup of former Czechoslovakia.
He was Slovakia’s representative to the European court of human rights from 1994 to 2000 and set up his centre-left Smer-SD party in 1999 after being turned down for a ministerial post by the Democratic Left, the Communists’ political heirs.
Smer won a landslide victory in 2006, catapulting Fico into the prime minister’s seat two years after Slovakia joined the EU. In 2009, he led his country into the eurozone, but was unable to form a coalition the following year despite winning elections.
He scored another landslide in 2012 after the fall of a centre-right coalition over corruption allegations, and won again in 2016 – but had to resign two years later amid mass protests over the murder of an investigative journalist and his fiancee. In October, he returned for a third-term as a PM at the head of a populist-nationalist coalition.
Embroiled in allegations of corruption he has always denied, Fico is brash and outspoken, with a penchant for bodybuilding, football and fast cars.
What are his politics?
Fico admires both Vladimir Putin, saying he would not permit the Russian president’s arrest under an international warrant if he came to Slovakia, and Hungary’s illiberal leader, Viktor Orbán, “who defends the interests of his country and his people”.
The Smer leader is also a tactician: in a three-decade career, he has navigated successfully between mainstream, pro-EU positions and a fiercely nationalist, anti-western rhetoric destined mainly for domestic consumption, proving more than willing to change tack depending on public opinion or political reality.
Saying he only has Slovakian interests at heart, Fico has been outspoken on numerous issues, savaging the EU and international NGOs, insulting his rivals, falsely alleging a coup plot and claiming the vote would be rigged.
He is also fiercely opposed to immigration – a key factor in his 2016 election win – and rejects “a distinct Muslim community in Slovakia”. More recently, he has criticised same-sex marriage and described adoption by same-sex couples as a “perversion”.
During the Covid pandemic he became the country’s most prominent voice against masks, lockdowns and vaccination. Before taking up office again in October, he exploited high levels of pro-Russian sentiment in Slovakia to undermine the government’s pro-western course.
