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[–]ageingrockstar[S] 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

A wrap on Saturday's election result in Slovakia. The readership here might be most interested in these 2 paragraphs :

In the past, Fico portrayed himself in the mould of a traditional social democrat. In the European Parliament, Smer is a member of the often aggressively pro-integrationist Socialists and Democrats group. But Fico has changed that. After resigning as prime minister in 2018 amid a major scandal following the murder of a journalist, he switched up his image, reinventing himself as a persecuted populist firebrand giving voice to the voiceless.

This resurrection was made possible by the series of global crises in recent years. Covid lockdowns and vaccine policies destroyed the faith of many Slovaks in accepted popular narratives. Then came the Ukraine war, and this deep mistrust found a new focus. Fico has ridden a wave of anti-Western, Ukraine-sceptic feeling, promising not to send “a single bullet” to Kyiv and bemoaning the labelling of anyone with a different opinion on the war as “pro-Russian”.