BRATISLAVA: Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico’s life is no longer in danger following an assassination attempt, Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak said on Sunday.
A lone gunman, who appeared in court Saturday, shot Fico four times and he was at one stage said to be fighting for his life.
“He has emerged from the immediate threat to his life, but his condition remains serious and he requires intensive care,” Kalinak, Fico’s closest political ally, told reporters.
The Slovak premier was shot as he was greeting supporters after a government meeting in the central town of Handlova. He underwent a five-hour operation on Wednesday and another on Friday at a hospital in the central city of Banska Bystrica.
“We can consider his condition stable with a positive prognosis,” Kalinak said outside the hospital, adding, “We all feel a bit more relaxed now.”
Kalinak added that Fico would stay at Banska Bystrica for the moment.
The suspected gunman, identified by Slovak media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, has been charged with premeditated attempted murder and was ordered held in custody at a hearing on Saturday.
Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said that if one of the shots “went just a few centimetres higher, it would have hit the prime minister’s liver”.
Deep divisions
The attempted assassination has highlighted acute political divisions in the country where 59-year-old Fico took office in October after his centrist populist Smer party won a general election.
He is serving his fourth term as prime minister after campaigning on proposals for peace between Russia and Slovakia’s neighbour Ukraine, and to halt military aid to Kyiv, which his government has done.
Fico leads a coalition comprising his Smer party, the centrist HLAS and the small nationalist SNS party.
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