
The new face of European illiberalism
On a spring afternoon in a former coal mining town, Robert Fico briefly became a household name.The Slovak prime minister was greeting a small crowd of his supporters in Handlová when an assailant pulled out a handgun and shot him five times at close range. The unusually brazen assassination attempt was global news. World leaders, from Joe Biden to Vladimir Putin, were united in condemnation of the act.
But if Slovaks had imagined a brush with mortality might change their combative head of government, they were soon put right. Upon leaving hospital three weeks after being shot, Fico lashed out in a video at opposition parties, “anti-government media” and civil society critics led by Hungarian-born billionaire philanthropist George Soros.… Seguir leyendo »