A 71-year-old poet shouted at the prime minister, who approached to shake his hand, but the old man fired five shots in succession, hitting him in the arm and abdomen.
This is a scene that took place in Slovakia, a small country in central Europe. At 2 p.m. local time on May 15, the country's Prime Minister Robert Fizo was shot after walking out of the government building to communicate with the people after attending a government meeting in Handlova.
This small country of 5.43 million people, which is usually difficult to make the international news prominence, is now in the spotlight of Europe. For no other reason, this is the first time in 20 years that a head of government has been attacked in Europe, and it has also occurred in an EU member state, a place where the rule of law and social order are relatively stable.
But what is even more special is that Slovakia borders Ukraine and is close to the front line of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In this country where pro-Russian and pro-European forces are at loggerheads, Fizo won the parliamentary elections with a far-right stance and a "pro-Russian and anti-American" campaign platform, and immediately cut off military aid to Kyiv after coming to power.
And the complex composition of the suspect also adds to the complexity of the assassination. As a poet and former security guard, the suspect had spoken out against violence and tolerance for immigrants, but he had joined an ultra-pro-Russian group to take a firm anti-immigrant stance, and the confused label portrait of the assailant shocked European leaders.
Prime Minister of Slovakia, Robert Fizo
At the moment, Fizo's situation is stable, but not out of danger. Further investigation into the motives of the killers is ongoing, but the "politicization" of the shooting has begun. Fizo's allies, government ministers, attributed the shooting to political motives, the result of the opposition and the media. Interior Minister Matus Sutaj-Estok said Slovakia was on the brink of civil war.
On a larger level, the rift caused by Slovakia's hateful politics has unnerved all of Europe.
"The Poet's Wrath"
Soon after the shooting, police arrested a 71-year-old man, a local resident named Juraj Cintula, and identified him as a lone assassin.
The gunman's son, who was contacted by local media, said he did not know his father's intentions, plans and actions, and also denied that his father was mentally ill. However, it was confirmed that Centula was legally in possession of a firearm: he had worked as a security guard at a shopping mall and was therefore licensed to carry a firearm.
Reporters visited the apartment complex where he lived, and neighbors across the wall from him said that there were hardly any suspicious movements in Chintula.
A man was detained after the shooting
Ččura was artistically active, loved to write poetry, published three collections of poems, and was a member of the Slovak Writers' Association. People did not notice anything unusual about him, and even in the early years, he founded an anti-violence movement with the slogan: "We can be dissatisfied, but not violent!" ”
Due to Fizo's distinctly pro-Russian stance, after the assassination, some media believed that the assassin might be pro-Ukrainian. But it soon became clear that Cčntula had joined a militant civilian armed group, the Slovak Conscripts, in 2016, which had a distinctly pro-Russian leaning, but ceased operations in 2022.
His "poems" published in recent years are also quite similar to Fizo's opposition to the refugee policy, which he did not do in the early years. The turning point came in 2016, when he was attacked by an immigrant man who was addicted to drugs while working in a shopping mall, and since then he has completely changed his attitude towards immigrants.
However, during last year's election, Centula did not vote for Fizo, and neighbors said that Centula opposed Fizo's efforts to tighten the media.
Embodying the tear in the 71-year-old's body, it is a reflection of the country.
Suspect Yura Centula
One of the direct consequences of the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022 is that the overall inflation rate in Europe has been raised. As a frontline country in the conflict zone bordering Ukraine, Slovakia is facing inflationary pressures and has also been hit by Ukrainian refugees, allowing Fizo to find a gap to regain power.
As a country belonging to the same Slavic nation as Russia, Slovakia has historically found the theoretical source of national independence with the help of the "pan-Slavism" of the Tsarist Empire, and the pro-Russian background of the people is deep.
In the 2023 general election, the Russia-Ukraine war has become the focus. At the time, the war was considered the most important issue facing the country, but when it came to aiding Ukraine, there was almost half of supporters and opponents.
This country, which is close to the front line of the conflict, has quickly torn apart into two camps, friendly to Russia and pro-EU and Western, seesawing and attacking each other.
Fizo played the card against aid to Ukraine, NATO and the eastward expansion of the European Union, combined with people's dissatisfaction with the pro-European government at that time on people's livelihood issues in the past few years, and finally succeeded in winning the right to form a cabinet for the third time.
Immediately after Fizo returned to power, he cut off Slovak military assistance to Kyiv. In January of this year, he accused Ukraine of being "completely under the influence and control of the United States" and therefore "not an independent sovereign state". Less than a year after coming to power, the capital, Bratislava, erupted in mass demonstrations against Fizo almost every month or two.
A large number of Ukrainian refugees continue to pour into Slovakia
Recently, Fizo has been widely attacked on social media for advocating the closure of a public media outlet that "spreads Western disinformation". On April 10, he also warned that the toxic social sentiment fueled by the opposition could lead to the murder of important political figures.
Who knew that the victim was actually himself.
Whether they are for or against Fizo, ordinary people are gradually intensified in this atmosphere of fierce confrontation. Similar to the killer of Lee Jae-myung, a South Korean politician, Chintula joined various civil political organizations with different positions, and eventually embarked on the path of physically harming politicians in an environment where political sentiments became more extreme and emotional.
Trump's students
Fizo at the beginning of entering the political arena, and Fizo at the moment, both in terms of political stance and personal posture, have undergone tremendous changes, as if they are two completely different people.
The 59-year-old "old fox" Fizo, who will be in power for the third time in 2023, gives the public the impression that he is populist, pro-Russian, Eurosceptic, and open-mouthed. And in 2006, the young Fizo, who became prime minister for the first time, was not like this.
He was one of the founders of the center-moderate-left party "Direction-Social Democrats"; At the time, Slovakia had only joined the European Union for two years, and Fizo and his party pursued a strict anti-corruption policy, making a clear cut from the "old figures" of the Cold War, while maintaining a variety of left-wing measures with social welfare implications in the EU-backed wave of marketization.
With Trump's rise in the United States, many elected leaders who were originally moderate have also "absorbed experience" from Trump, and Fizzo has also become a "Trump student".
Fizo
More than a decade later, after two resignations, and now in power for the third time, the leader of the moderate left-wing party is long gone. Fizo, who has transformed into the "Slovak Trump", has learned a whole set of Trump's campaign philosophy: exploiting the anti-elitist sentiments of the underclass to humiliate journalists he doesn't like in public; Channeling all sorts of conspiracy theories around "globalism" and "Jewish blocs" through social networks weakens the credibility of the state's public institutions and cultivates a populace loyal to themselves rather than to the state.
But this "Trump prescription" has strong side effects. Slovakia's political contradictions have intensified as a result of Fizo's long-standing use of humiliating terms and conspiracy theories against various groups, including journalists, academics, ethnic and sexual minorities. The camp that opposes and supports Fizo is no longer just playing in the parliament chambers, but has brought confrontation to the streets of the cities.
Gone are the days when people who had different positions in the past but could still shake hands and make peace when they walked out of the council hall, and there were more emotional curses from both sides.
On February 21, 2018, Slovak investigative journalist Jan Kuchuk and his fiancée were found dead in their home after being shot at a short distance. Kuchuk focused on investigating corruption scandals at the top of the Slovak government, and before his death, he was investigating the links between one of Fizo's aides and the gang, which he believed had offended Fizo's forces and caused his death.
Kucuk's death sparked a violent emotional reaction in Slovak society, and in March of the same year, it triggered the largest demonstration in Slovakia since the end of the Cold War. This scandal also prompted the second fall of the Fizo government.
On March 1, 2018 local time, people held a silent march holding placards to commemorate the murdered journalist and his fiancée
After stepping down for the second time, the ambitious Fizo acted almost like today's Trump script: while entangled in lawsuits, he used social media to publicize that he was persecuted by the "Soros forces", "globalists" and "Jewish group", presented himself as a victim of his country's elite machine, and finally waited for the opportunity to be resurrected.
It can be said that Fizo, who benefited from political rift and division, was also attacked in the end, and the hatred politics he participated in and promoted almost cost him his life.
Europe is afraid
In the past, in European countries like Slovakia, it was not difficult to get in close contact with government leaders and ordinary people. Especially after the end of the Cold War, when Europe entered a period of economic prosperity, political assassinations were almost extinct.
It is not new for the prime minister to take pictures with the people up close, or to shop, drink and go shopping like ordinary people. In the past, the picture of Fizo, who was shirtless, walking his dog on the banks of the Danube, was also a strange thing in the eyes of ordinary people.
Today, that vision is gone.
However, this impact is not limited to Slovakia.
Gone are the spectacles of European prosperity
Within the EU, Fizo is regarded as an outlier because of his different stance from most countries on the Russia-Ukraine issue. But since the assassination, many EU leaders have condemned it. The violence caused by the deterioration of the political climate and even the threat to their own personal safety have become the concern of a considerable number of European politicians.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he had also received death threats after Fizo's assassination. Tusk also posted screenshots of various comments on his social media accounts, including the phrase "Slovakia showed us how to deal with Tusk." In Germany, which is more economically developed, there have been three violent attacks on parliamentarians in just one week.
With the European Parliament elections set to take place in early June, the political atmosphere in the 27 member states has become tense. Although the European Parliament is not the legislature of a sovereign country, lacks livelihood issues directly related to voters, and plays more of a role in suggesting or conveying public opinion in some major decisions, the opposition in many countries regards this kind of election as a good opportunity for their own rulers to step down.
It is highly likely that some EU countries will be the first to foreshadow the European Parliament elections. In the 2014 European Parliament elections, two years before the Brexit referendum, the pro-Brexit "British Independence Party" overwhelmed the ruling Conservative Party and the main opposition Labour Party in the United Kingdom, and became the largest party representing Britain in the European Parliament. According to the European political news website Euractiv, populist right-wing parties are likely to be enriched in this election.
In June 2016, the United Kingdom voted to "leave the European Union"
At the same time, in Eastern Europe, the "alliance of Putin's understandingists" led by Hungary, Austria, and Slovakia is expanding, which will inevitably exacerbate the consensus that divides Europeans.
As geopolitics become more sinister and many industries are facing a shift in the context of the ebb tide of globalization, many countries in the EU are struggling to reach a consensus on many issues.
The various factions in various countries have attacked each other in all kinds of life-and-death language, and the relations between the ruling party and the opposition parties have long been not as harmonious as in the past, and the rift and division brought about by this will inevitably intensify among the people.
The attack on Fizzo has added to the already contentious European environment.
Who is the next "Fizo"? Probably every European politician has to ask himself.