Assassination attempt opens Slovakia’s wounds, some linked to PM Fico

Slovakia’s interior minister says the country is ‘on the edge of a civil war’ as political polarisation reaches dangerous heights. Tomas Taraba, Fico’s deputy and Slovakia’s environment minister, initially accused the centre-left political opposition, saying it had “blood on its hands”. As Fico’s condition remained critical, Interior Minister Matus Estok said Slovakia was “on the edge of a civil war” because of heightened political rhetoric on social media. “The one important difference in Slovakia is that, with Mr Fico’s return to power last October and the presidential election last month which his ally Peter Pellegrini won, nationalists are governing and liberals have been relegated to the opposition, in contrast to most of Western Europe where liberal governments hang on and conservatives are in opposition,” he told Al Jazeera. “In Slovakia the coalition was weak … And the conservative party got even bigger and came back with stronger positions.” Fico shares a worldview with Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Poland’s Jaroslaw Kaczynski, and eurosceptic nationalists lurking in the Czech Republic, Bulgaria and elsewhere in the former Warsaw Pact countries.