Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC, at the Gaylord National Resort and Convention Center, Friday, February 21, 2025, in Oxon Hill, Md., USA. (source: Jose Luis Magana)
Prime Minister Robert Fico made a grand entrance at the CPAC conference in the USA last week, waving to the applauding crowd as a promotional video played. The clip portrayed him as a victim of a politically motivated assassination attempt in May 2024 – despite the attacker, Juraj Cintula, never having been politically active beyond attending protests like thousands of others, Sme daily reports.
The video claimed that Fico was targeted for his “anti-fascist values,” his push to end the war in Ukraine, and his defence of “traditional marriage.” However, Cintula never cited these as his motivations, stating that he intended to injure Fico, not kill him. A leaked police video revealed that he acted out of opposition to Fico’s government.
The investigation into the attack has come to an end after almost a year. However, charges have yet to be filed. Fico and his allies continue to claim that Cintula is linked to the current opposition, though they have provided no evidence to support this.
Conversely, absent from CPAC was any mention of Fico’s reforms shielding political allies from prosecution or his past alliances with extremist figures like Milan Uhrík of Republika, a non-parliamentary political movement currently performing well in the polls.
Instead, Fico spoke of political persecution, claiming that he had been investigated four times for his views and unlawfully surveilled between 2020 and 2023.
Public records contradict him: between 2020 and 2023, he faced two criminal charges. One, in December 2021, was for flouting pandemic restrictions during a protest; it was swiftly dropped. The second, in April 2022, involved allegations that Fico and some party members ran a criminal network and leaked tax secrets. His ally Robert Kaliňák, now serving as defence minister, was detained for 23 days, but Fico avoided custody when parliament refused to let the court decide on his detention. The case was dismissed in November 2022 under a controversial legal tool—Article 363 of the Penal Code.
As for Fico’s claims of further charges, it is unclear what he had in mind.
A separate 2019 case saw him briefly accused of endorsing hate speech after defending far-right politician Milan Mazurek’s racist remarks. Authorities dropped the case in 2020. Earlier, in 2016, prosecutors declined to charge Fico over anti-Muslim comments.
As for alleged illegal surveillance, Fico may have been referring to the 2021 recordings from a hunting lodge, where he was caught discussing political retribution with oligarch Miroslav Bödör, among others. A court-authorised wiretap inadvertently picked up the conversations. Fico challenged the recordings in the Constitutional Court but lost, with judges recommending in 2022 that he turn to the general court if he felt his rights had been violated.
At CPAC, however, none of this was mentioned. Instead, Fico spun a narrative of victimhood.
