Robert Fico has reason to celebrate. No one else has. Not even the Christian Democrats, although they will continue to tell themselves that they have a spine, and will insist that they presented their voters with a legislative gift: two genders only, a ban on surrogacy, and changes to adoption law – all now enshrined in the constitution.
In reality, what they did, together with two of Igor Matovič's MPs, is help Fico hide the real challenges facing the country, divert attention from his amateurish attempts to consolidates the public finances, and elevate a nationalist hybrid to the level of national identity.
Above all, they helped him erode trust within the opposition.
Fico could not care less about what those people who do not vote for him – according to current polls, this group constitutes more than half of the people in Slovakia – think of his actions.
He enjoys luxury: the people he primarily appeals to will find it neither suspicious nor strange that just a few hours after pushing the third fiscal consolidation package through parliament, he rushed to vote on a constitutional amendment while creating a commotion about the values of the Christian Democratic Movement (KDH).
That amendment is one that the European protector of constitutionality – the Venice Commission – has called vague, retroactive and unnecessary.
But above all, it is an amendment that has been dangled in front of the KDH for several months, irritating not just the latter's voters, but also the entire opposition.
That was ultimately the main goal of this caricature of a law that forms the national identity of a Slovak nationalist.
Fico could not care less about genders
In fact, the PM could not care less about "two genders" or the new rules on child adoption added to the constitution. He never hid it from the KDH: if this amendment did not pass because of the Christian Democrats, "this will be the last time Smer's 42 MPs will be ready to vote for such a change to the constitution," he said.
Any party for which enshrining two genders in the constitution was essential would not treat its legislative child in this way.
