Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico drew parallels on Sunday between the recent attack on Donald Trump and his own harrowing experience in May. Trump, the former US president, narrowly escaped injury after being struck by a bullet during a campaign rally on Saturday.
Fico, aged 59, endured a similar attack when he was hit by four bullets at close range following a government meeting in central Slovakia on May 15. After undergoing extensive surgeries at a nearby hospital, he returned to his duties just last week.
“The similarities in these incidents are striking,” Fico remarked on his official website. He pointedly criticized Slovakia’s liberal opposition for allegedly stoking animosity towards him.
“If the attacker targeting Donald Trump had read local newspapers like Dennik N, Sme, or Aktuality and understood Slovak, they might have felt compelled to ‘correct’ things,” Fico asserted on Sunday.
According to Fico, political adversaries of Trump are attempting to silence him, and when unsuccessful, they provoke public discontent to the point where desperate actions occur.
Fico currently leads a coalition comprising his centrist Smer-SD party, the centrist Hlas party, and the far-right SNS party in governing Slovakia, a member state of the EU and NATO with a population of 5.4 million.
He has also advocated for Slovakia to erect a barrier to block what he perceives as the spread of “progressive and liberal ideologies,” likening them to a cancer.
