(source: SME)
Former PM Robert Fico, now chairman and MP of the ruling Smer, has been refusing to communicate with journalists of the Sme daily. Now, he has written an opinion piece for the daily. In it, he labels NGOs and media as “anti-governmental”.
The Sme daily published the opinion piece on August 1 with a note that in the text, Fico repeats conspiracy theories about subversive NGOs and paints media as the enemies of the nation. Therefore, the response of Sme’s Editor-in-Chief Beata Balogová was published alongside Fico’s text.
In his commentary, the former prime minister admits that as a politician who has been on the scene for 26 years, he feels his share of responsibility for what he views as the deteriorating state of parliamentary democracy in Slovakia.
Conflict with the media
He repeats that Slovakia is one of the countries with the highest press freedom ranking. In one breath, he accuses media of being “hundreds of kilometres away from objectiveness”, of “spreading lies and hate towards social democracy”, and of “doing politics”, even though they have “no responsibility towards the voters nor any duties that rest on the shoulders of politicians and political subjects (like tax and property returns)”.
“The literally anti-governmental political activities of some media are so obvious that many opposition political parties can only envy them,” Fico wrote and went on to claim that media “have never understood the basics of journalism and democracy”.
