Slovakian politicians yesterday called for calm in the Central European country after Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot multiple times by a would-be assassin on Wednesday.
Fico was in serious, but stable condition, a hospital official said, after he was hit multiple times in an attempt on his life.
A suspect was in custody.
Photo: AP
Slovakian Minister of the Interior Matus Sutaj Estok on Wednesday said that an initial investigation found “a clear political motivation” behind the attack on Fico while he was attending a government meeting in a former coal mining town.
The minister did not specify what the motivation was.
The attempt on Fico’s life came at a time of high polarization in Slovakia, as thousands of demonstrators have repeatedly rallied in the capital and across the country to protest his policies.
Photo: Reuters
It also comes ahead of European Parliament elections next month.
Slovak President Zuzana Caputova yesterday said that the heads of the country’s political parties would meet in an effort to bring calm and “refuse violence.”
“We want to call on everyone be responsible,” Caputova said at a news conference in the capital, Bratislava.
Caputova was speaking alongside Peter Pellegrini, Slovakia’s president-elect.
“This assassination attempt deserves a joint and unequivocal condemnation,” Pellegrini said.
“I call on all parties in Slovakia to interrupt or at least significantly reduce their campaign for the European Parliament election, because the campaign is naturally linked to confrontation, and confrontation is the last thing Slovakia needs at the moment,” he added.
Fico’s government, elected in September last year, has halted arms deliveries to Ukraine and has plans to amend the penal code to eliminate a special anti-graft prosecutor and to take control of public media entities.
It has also been hesitant to sign a WHO-led vaccine treaty.
Zuzana Eliasova, a resident of Bratislava, said the attack on Fico was a “shock” to the nation and an attack on democracy at a time when political tensions were already running high.
“I believe that a lot of people or even the whole society will look into their conscience, because the polarization here has been huge among all different parts of society,” she said.
Doctors performed a five-hour operation on Fico, who was initially reported to be in life-threatening condition, according to director of the F.D. Roosevelt Hospital in Banska Bystrica, Miriam Lapunikova.
He was being treated in an intensive care unit.
Five shots were fired outside a cultural center in the town of Handlova, nearly 140km northeast of the capital, government officials said.
Additional reporting by staff writer
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