After being shot after a social event on Wednesday afternoon, Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was wounded in a confrontation that marked the end of his decades-long political career, he is now in serious condition.
Fico, 59, was born in 1964 in what was then Czechoslovakia. Before the end of communism, he was a Communist Party part before receiving his law degree in 1986 and was the first elected member of the Party of the Democrat Left in 1992 to Slovakia’s congress.
In the 1990s, he spent several years as a government representative for the Slovak Republic before the German Commission of Human Rights and the European Court of Human Rights. In 1999, he became chairman of the Smer ( Direction ) party, of which he has been a pivotal figure ever since.
He and Smer have most frequently been compared to right-wing officials like Viktor Orban, the patriotic prime minister of neighboring Hungary, but they have also been compared to one another.
Fico returned to power in Slovakia last month, having formerly served twice as prime minister, from 2006 to 2010 and again from 2012 to 2018. In the past of Slovakia, he served as the longest-serving head of government in the background of the European Union and as a member of NATO.
After five years in criticism, Fico’s party won legislative elections last year on a pro- Soviet and anti- American system. He has argued that Nato and the United States propelled Moscow into a war and has vowed to stop Slovakia’s offer of military support to Ukraine as it battled Russia’s full-scale war.
The new government soon stopped shipping arms to Ukraine following his win in the election. Numerous people across Slovakia took to the streets to protest Fico’s pro-Russian and various policies, including those that included plans to amend the penal code, remove a particular anti-graft counsel, and take control of the public media.
Fico’s re-election to power sparked concern among his detractors that he and his group, which had long been tarnished by scandal, may direct Slovakia to abandon its pro-Western path. He vowed to pursue a” republic” foreign plan, promised a strong stance against movement and no- political institutions, and campaigned against LGBTQ+ right.
He was charged in 2022 with supposedly forming a legal team and using power to defraud reporters, and he earned a standing for his tirades against reporters. After the murder of his wife and fellow investigative journalist Jan Kuciak in Slovakia, he and his state resigned in 2018. Kuciuniak had been covering tax-related crimes that implicated senior Czech politicians.
Fico is married and the parent of one baby.
