Two weeks later Shot and seriously injured in an assassination attemptSlovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was discharged from hospital on Thursday and sent back to his home in the capital, Bratislava.
Mr. Fico underwent several rounds of surgery at the hospital in central Slovakia, where director Miriam Lapunikova told TV3 television that the prime minister’s condition was largely stable enough to continue treatment at his residence.
Mr Fico, a combative populist who took office after a narrow victory in parliamentary elections last October, has not spoken publicly since he was shot on May 15 while meeting with supporters in the Slovak town of Handlova.
His return to Bratislava signals he will retake control of a government that opponents accuse of eroding democracy and taking Slovakia down the authoritarian path taken by Prime Minister Viktor Orban in neighboring Hungary.
A 71-year-old man Charged with premeditated murder The suspect in the shooting was initially described by officials as a lone wolf. But later they said he may have accomplices. An amateur poet and former coal miner with no fixed political views, Some government supporters and Mr Orban describe him as a “left-wing activist”, but there is no evidence to support this.
Political sentiment Serious polarization Slovakia was already in a frenzy before the shooting, and despite calls from both its outgoing and incoming presidents for rival political parties to tone down their words and actions, Slovakia has shown no signs of calming down. Fico’s interior minister even warned that Slovakia was at risk of civil war, but most observers believe that is highly unlikely.
While Fico was in hospital, the Direction-led coalition government in Banská Bystrica pushed through parliament a controversial bill to reform the public broadcasting system. The coalition said it was necessary to eliminate political bias, but opponents denounced it as an attempt to impose Hungarian-style government control over the media.
Private TV Markiza has been critical of Fico’s combative style and policies and recently fired a prominent political presenter, prompting employees to threaten strikes and raising concerns that the station’s owners were seeking to curry favor with the government.
Before being fired, the presenter, Michal Kovacic, spoke out against the risk of “Orbanisation” of the Slovak media, a reference to Mr Orban’s tight control over Hungarian television and other media.
Markiza’s management said in a statement that Kovacic was fired to “ensure diversity of opinion.”
