‘Positive prognosis’ for Slovakia PM Robert Fico after latest surgery
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Mr Robert Fico underwent a two-hour operation on May 17 that has increased hopes for his recovery, after he was shot four times at close range.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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BANSKA BYSTRICA, Slovakia - Slovakia’s Health Minister said on May 18 the prognosis for Prime Minister Robert Fico was “positive” after he underwent a two-hour operation following an assassination attempt
Mr Fico has been in hospital since May 15, when a lone gunman shot him four times, including in the abdomen.
He underwent a five-hour operation on May 15 and a two-hour operation on May 17, both at a hospital in the central Slovakian city of Banska Bystrica.
“Yesterday’s surgery, which took two hours, contributed to a positive prognosis of the Prime Minister’s health condition,” Health Minister Zuzana Dolinkova told reporters.
“The Prime Minister’s condition is stable, but it’s still serious,” she added.
The suspected gunman, identified by Slovakian media as 71-year-old poet Juraj Cintula, arrived at a special penal court in Pezinok, north-east of the capital Bratislava, on the morning of May 18.
The court is considering a prosecutor’s request made on May 17 that Cintula be placed in pre-trial detention after he had been charged with a premeditated murder attempt.
Cintula fired five shots at Mr Fico and hit him four times as the Prime Minister was walking towards his supporters after a government meeting in the central mining town of Handlova.
Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said earlier that if one of the shots “went just a few centimetres higher, it would have hit the Prime Minister’s liver”.
Deputy Prime Minister Robert Kalinak, Mr Fico’s closest political ally, said the Prime Minister was conscious and was expected to recover.
“I don’t think he could be taken to Bratislava in the coming days,” he told reporters. “His condition is still serious. It will take several more days for us to know definitively which way it is going.”
The 59-year-old Mr 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 for halting military aid to Kyiv, which his government later did.
Mr Kalinak said the government would carry on without Mr Fico “according to the programme he has outlined”, including two meetings next week.
Febrile politics
The shooting was the first major assassination attempt on a European political leader
Political analysts and lawmakers say it has exposed an increasingly febrile and polarised political climate both in Slovakia and across Europe.
Outgoing pro-Western President Zuzana Caputova and her successor, Mr Peter Pellegrini, a Fico ally who will take office in June, have called on fellow Slovaks to refrain from “confrontation” after the shooting.
They called a meeting of all parliamentary party leaders for May 21 in a bid to show unity in the aftermath of the attack.
Mr Kalinak, however, suggested Smer would snub the meeting.
“They invited political party chiefs, and our chairman is in the hands of doctors,” he said.
Mr Kalinak added he would call Ms Caputova about the matter, stressing that Slovakia needed “reconciliation and peace”.
But he was among politicians pointing fingers at their opponents for allegedly causing the attack, slamming opposition politicians and “selected media” on May 17 for labelling Mr Fico as a criminal, dictator or Russian President Vladimir Putin’s servant before the attack.
“All these lies are the main reasons why Robert Fico is fighting for his life today,” he said in an emotional message on Smer’s website. AFP
