The murder that forced a whole government to resign
March 29, 2018 7.50am EDT
Slovakia has become the latest country in Eastern Europe to face a major political crisis. But while regional neighbours such as Poland and Hungary have been clashing with the EU over their perceived illiberalism, for Slovakia, the pressure on the government has come from the country’s own citizens.
The tension has been such that the entire cabinet of prime minister Robert Fico had to resign in a single day.
The story began when police discovered the bodies of Slovak journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancé, Martina Kušnírová, in their home in the village of Veľká Mača, about 60 km east of the capital, Bratislava . Both had died of gunshot wounds in what appeared to be a targeted assassination.
Kuciak, who worked as a reporter for the online news website Aktuality.sk, had been working on an article implicating prominent members of the ruling coalition party SMER-SD in tax fraud. After his death, Aktuality.sk published Kuciak’s final, unfinished article . It detailed alleged ties between several high-ranking officials with the Calabrian crime syndicate, the
‘Ndrangheta . They included Viliam Jasaň, the secretary of the State Security Council of Slovakia, and Mária Trošková, chief adviser to prime minister Robert Fico. Both have denied any wrongdoing.
The stack of cash
Given that all major political parties have been implicated in incidents of crony-capitalism and corruption since Slovakia’s independence in 1993, Kuciak’s revelations hardly came as a surprise to the public. The fact that he lost his life reporting them, however, was a profound shock. Fico’s disdain for members of the independent press, who he previously described as “prostitutes, idiots and snakes”, was already well known . But this was a whole new level. People felt that criminal elements in Slovak society were now able to operate with impunity.
The initial reaction of the Slovak government appeared to confirm this. In their first appearance after the murders, Fico, interior minister Robert Kaliňák and head of policing Tibor Gašpar failed to address questions about the accusations the deceased journalist had made. Instead, they offered a reward of €1m for information about the murder. Bizarrely, they chose to display the money to the reporters and public in the form of a large pile of bank notes
