The Hungarian government is closely following the “unusual” events in Slovakia’s domestic politics, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto told MTI on Saturday.
zijjarto said that, according to press reports, efforts are being made to put the opposition leader behind bars, which “warrants closer attention than usual”.
Slovakia’s national criminal agency NAKA has launched a procedure against Robert Fico, the former prime minister and current leader of the opposition Social Democrats (Smer-SD), and his former interior minister Robert Kalinak on suspicion of setting up and supporting a criminal group and abuse of office.
Fico said at a press conference on Saturday that the charges were baseless and politically motivated. According to the politician, Slovakia is not a state governed by the rule of law but an “American province”. He said that it’s “not Hungary or Poland, but Slovakia is the ulcer on the body of Europe”.
Fico twice served as the country’s prime minister from 2006 to 2010, and again from 2012 to 2018.
During his tenure, he sought to strengthen relations with several non-EU countries such as Serbia and Russia, breaking with a pro-NATO, Western-focused trend established after the 1998 Slovak election.
After coming to power in 2006, Fico declared that Slovakia’s relations with Russia would improve after eight years of “neglect” while referring to “Slavonic solidarity,” which was a central theme of the Slovak National Awakening in the 1850s.