By Abiola Olawale
Slovakia’s prime minister, Robert Fico underwent an emergency surgery on Wednesday after he was reportedly shot five times and critically wounded in a town in central Slovakia.
The Deputy Prime Minister, Tomas Taraba, has also confirmed that his principal is now in a stable condition.
Taraba who spoke with the press revealed that the operation appeared to have gone well. “I guess in the end he will survive,” he said.
Also, Miriam Lapunikova, director of the F. D. Roosevelt University Hospital in Banska Bystrica, where Mr Fico was admitted, told a press conference that while the Prime Minister is no longer in a life-threatening condition, the situation is still “truly very serious”.
The hospital director also confirmed that Fico is currently in an intensive care unit after five hours of surgery.
The New Diplomat reports that Fico on Wednesday suffered a brutal assassination and was gravely injured in an attack in the small town of Handlova, a town located in the Prievidza District, Trenčín Region of Slovakia.
The gunman was in a small crowd of Fico supporters who were gathered outside a cultural centre in Handlova, where the prime minister had been holding a meeting.
The gunman was reported to have fired five shots at close range and Fico was said to be hit in the stomach and the arm.
He was immediately rushed to the hospital in an air ambulance and spent five hours in surgery.
Speaking on the incident, Slovakia’s Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estoka described it as a politically motivated assassination attempt.
The shooting came on the day parliament began discussing the government’s proposal to abolish Slovakia’s public broadcaster RTVS.
Thousands of Slovaks have protested against the proposed reform of the public broadcaster in recent weeks. However, a planned opposition-led demonstration was called off on Wednesday as news of the shooting emerged.
The New Diplomat reports that Fico, born in 1964 in what was then Czechoslovakia, won a third term as Slovakian prime minister in October.
Before the election, Fico openly expressed his pro-Kremlin sentiments and attributed Russia’s mobilisation to “Ukrainian Nazis and fascists,” echoing the narrative used by Russian President Vladimir Putin to justify the war.
He previously served as Slovakia’s prime minister for more than a decade, between 2006 and 2010, and then again from 2012 to 2018.
In 2018 he was forced to step down amid controversy after the assassination of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak. Kuciak was investigating corruption, including individuals directly linked to Fico and his political party, Direction – Social Democracy (SMER).
