An uncertain period now opens before Slovakia, after the attempted assassination of its prime minister, Robert Fico, a predominant figure in national politics and a habitual inciter of division, has shaken the scene and forced some and others to confront the dangers of inflamed rhetoric and social confrontation. Fico, 59, remains hospitalized with extremely serious injuries from the shooting last Wednesday of a 71-year-old man, Juraj Cintula, who acted for political motivations and who, arrested instantly, is in preventive detention awaiting arrest. judgment.
The medical team treating the prime minister – who remains in serious condition in the ICU – considers that his life is no longer in danger. “It can be concluded that the patient is no longer in a situation of immediate life-threatening risk,” the Roosevelt hospital in the town of Banská Bystrica, where Fico has been operated on twice since the assassination attempt, stated yesterday on its Facebook page. . For now, he is ruling out his transfer to the capital, Bratislava, where he has his residence.
On the investigation front, the hypothesis has emerged that Cintula, initially considered a lone wolf who attacked on his own, may have acted as part of a group of people who encouraged each other to commit a murder. A factor that suggests the participation of other people is that the suspect’s communications on the Internet were deleted two hours after the assassination attempt, but not by himself – who was already detained – and probably not by his wife, he explained at a press conference. the Minister of the Interior, Matús Sutaj-Estok. This would indicate that “the crime could have been committed by a certain group of people,” the minister said.
On the political front, the division continues. Three weeks before the European elections, and seeking to temper the incendiary polarization that has characterized the Slovak political arena for years, the elected president, Peter Pellegrini (an ally of Fico), and the outgoing president, Zuzana Caputová (located in the antipodes of the prime minister), they proposed already, the day after the assassination attempt, a meeting with leaders of the parties with parliamentary representation “to calm the situation and reject violence”, to be held tomorrow, Tuesday.
However, such a meeting will ultimately not take place. Pellegrini himself posted a video on Facebook saying that it is probably not the right time for such conversations. Pellegrini said he had verified that “the political scene is not prepared for mutual reconciliation.”
Indeed, after the stupor of the first days – in which institutional calls for calm coexisted with accusations by some members of the Government of the liberal and pro-European opposition, and critical media, of having contributed to the attack -, the political climate has become tense again.
Smer-SSD, Fico’s populist social democratic party, hinted that it would not attend the meeting, through Defense Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinák, the government’s unofficial representative in Fico’s absence. In the unicameral Parliament there are seven parties, and some crossed vetoes dynamite the meeting. The only ones that confirmed that they would go are two opposition parties: the pro-European Progressive Slovakia, led by Michal Simecka, and the liberal SaS.
