Slovakia’s Prime Minister Robert Fico throughout a press convention in Budapest in January this 12 months. On Wednesday afternoon, he was shot throughout a go to to the city of Handlova in Slovakia. Photo: Denes Erdos/AP/NTB
By NTB | 15.05.2024 20:09:34
Crime and justice: Slovakia skilled Jørn Holm-Hansen on the Urban and Regional Research Institute NIBR at Oslo Met says he doesn’t hope anybody will blame the political opposition after the assassination of Robert Fico on Wednesday afternoon.
The Slovak Prime Minister was hit by a number of photographs on Wednesday after a authorities assembly within the city of Handlova. A 71-year-old left-wing poet has been arrested and suspected of getting fired the photographs.
– There is fierce hatred in the direction of Fico amongst sure teams in Slovakia. He is a kind of political chief that many like and plenty of hate, however only a few have a impartial relationship with, says Holm-Hansen to NTB.
– I’d be very stunned if it have been staged by somebody who takes political accountability, says Holm-Hansen.
Slovakia’s political panorama is very divided. On the one hand, there’s a liberal or progressive wing which is anxious with following the EU in most areas. The different aspect, for which the 59-year-old Robert Fico has been a number one determine, is the extra nationally conservative wing, which wish to be part of each the EU and NATO, however which works for larger authority for the person member states.
– Fico has not been pro-Russian, he has clearly distanced himself from the struggle in Ukraine. But he’s additionally not anti-Russian and that matches properly with the temper within the nation, says Holm-Hansen.
Robert Fico additionally assured that the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, wouldn’t be arrested if he got here to Slovakia, in direct violation of the worldwide arrest warrant issued for him.
In 2018, he was pressured to resign following large demonstrations after journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee have been killed after he had labored to uncover connections between businessmen, the federal government and the Italian mafia.
In 2023, nonetheless, Fico and Smer made a political comeback and received the election once more after they grew to become the biggest social gathering within the election on 30 September.
The researcher additionally says that he doubts that there’s any organized political setting behind the assassination.
With Robert Fico on the helm, Slovakia has been put in the identical group as Hungary’s Viktor Orban. He has additionally beforehand questioned Ukraine’s sovereignty and stopped arms help to Ukraine.
Fico’s political profession started within the nation’s Communist Party even earlier than the Iron Curtain fell on the finish of the Eighties. Towards the tip of the Nineteen Nineties, he fashioned his personal social gathering, Smer-SSD. Since he first grew to become Slovakia’s prime minister in 2006, Fico has led the federal government a complete of 4 instances.
(©NTB)