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Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Wednesday blamed the country’s opposition for his getting shot, while insisting that he bore “no hatred” towards his assailant.
Fico on Wednesday used his first speech since being attacked last month to describe the shooter as a “messenger of evil and political hatred, which the politically unsuccessful and frustrated opposition has developed in Slovakia to unmanageable proportions”.
Fico in a video posted on social media said of his assailant “I forgive him”, but at the same time called him “an activist of the Slovak opposition”.
He also cast doubt on his own interior minister’s initial assessment that he had been the victim of a “lone wolf” shooter who had a “political motivation” but did not belong to a specific political group.
Instead, Fico said he had no reason to believe the shooter was just a “lone madman”, stressing that he had long predicted that a senior government politician could suffer this kind of attack.
He was shot several times as he greeted supporters on the street in the town of Handlová. A 71-year-old suspect was detained and charged with Fico’s attempted murder last month.
Fico, who continues to recover from emergency abdominal surgery, said it would be “a small miracle if I return to work in several weeks”.
The shooting of the populist, Eurosceptic leader came amid deep political divisions in Slovakia, where Fico’s return to power in October has been followed by mass protests against several of the reforms his coalition government has been pushing through.
Critics say Fico is trying to seriously undermine the rule of law as well as the independence of the media and non-governmental organisations.
“This is a very polarising video blaming one part of the political class for what happened to him,” said Slovak analyst Milan Nič, of the German Council on Foreign Relations. “Fico has chosen not to wait for the outcome of the police investigations and has also put in a foreign policy narrative. This will mobilise his voters but it can only increase polarisation and hatred in Slovak politics.”
Last October Fico started his fourth mandate as premier after pledging to stop supplying weapons to Ukraine and calling on the EU to end sanctions against Russia.
On Wednesday he insisted his country could follow its own “self-confident, sovereign Slovak foreign policy” whatever its western allies decided. He made clear he was willing to challenge the view that “the war in Ukraine must continue at all costs . . . Anyone who does not identify with this single obligatory opinion is immediately labelled a Russian agent, is politically marginalised internationally.”
“I reject interference in the internal affairs of other countries or the forced export of democracy to countries that have decided to go their own way,” Fico added. He raised previous issues on which he deviated from other Nato countries, such as the bombing of Belgrade or a Slovak presence in Iraq, or EU policies such as mandatory quotas for migrants and the right of veto for member states in Brussels decisions.
Elections to the European parliament this weekend look likely to yield another win for Fico’s coalition. The latest opinion polls show his Smer party and the main opposition Progressive Slovakia party almost neck and neck on about 23 per cent each, but with Fico’s main coalition ally Hlas on about 12 per cent.
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