According to him, Slovakia is going through a period of intense political conflict, which affects various aspects of society. Political sociologist Dominik Želinský stated that the situation is not simple and does not concern the entire nation, but above all strong camps.
“On the one hand, supporters of the current government coalition and on the other, supporters of the opposition, who are really very radicalized, these are politicized groups that are in a very intense social conflict. That means the atmosphere is, in a nutshell, quite thick, it’s just a heightened political conflict, which causes intense fighting.” said an expert at the Epicenter.
According to him, one of the key elements of the conflict is also the relationship between the government and the media: “The government has indeed explicitly defined some media as hostile and refuses to communicate with them.”
Želinský also emphasizes that this situation threatens not only the freedom of the press, but also has wider implications for the public’s trust in political institutions.
He sees the cause of the current situation in the political chaos of the last three years: “Those three years were extremely chaotic, extremely unpopular and at the same time pitted against each other in a very well mobilized and experienced opposition to Robert Fico who eventually won the election.” According to Želinski, trust in institutions such as the police or the judiciary has broken down.
Želinski expects a sharp election campaign. “It started this weekend with Robert Fitz’s visit to Paris and a full speech on the second anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.” he responded, among other things, to a video in which Robert Fico spoke, for example, about the “false demonization of President Putin” or that the EU’s only plan is to “support mutual killing of Slavs”.
Drawn into war?
According to Želinski, at that moment begins a “furious campaign in which SMĚR, HLAS and SNS will actively try to create fear that Slovakia and Slovak soldiers will hypothetically be sent to fight in Ukraine. It already looks very ugly in this public space, the way they express themselves and of course the next aspect will be the attacks on institutions”.
“This has already been preceded and will be followed by attacks on the Constitutional Court,” warns the expert, stating that the aim will be to reach far-right voters who “hypothetically do not yet have to sympathize and do not sympathize with Peter Pellegrini as a personality, and at the same time to reach voters who are a bit in the middle and who are not sure and thus creates a threat for them that Ivan Korčok will drag us into war.”
Želinský warned against further polarization of society and against the strategy of creating fear in order to mobilize voters: “It creates a key narrative that we saw, say, a year ago in the Czech Republic, that we want peace, but we don’t want war, which creates a sense of fear and threat that if liberals like Korčok come, they will drive us to war.” According to him, this is just a strategy to save Peter Pellegrini in the second round.
