Upon crossing the Danube by car into Bratislava’s central business district, one of the most conspicuous sights is political graffiti adorning a line of construction barrier walls. The messages are unambiguous. Fico wants Russia here. Fico = dark times. Death to the Russian Nazis. Over a week after Prime Minister Robert Fico suffered four gunshot wounds in an assassination attempt, the graffiti remains. For Slovakians, the neighboring war is an omnipresent burden. According to recent statements from hospital and government spokesmen, Fico is in stable condition and no longer in immediate danger. He is in life, as in politics, a consummate survivor.  Western leaders offered mostly languid responses reminiscent of their banalities after an Islamic terrorist attack. Journalists barely attempted to hide their contempt for the victim. “It’s not surprising that this sort of event might take place,” opined one Sky News commentator. The Financial Times published a piece titled “How Slovakia’s toxic politics left PM fighting for his life.” Politico asserted the “Roots of Robert Fico’s shooting lie in Slovakia’s bitter divides.” EU luminary and former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt reposted the article and added, “The road to violence starts with violent rhetoric…” (READ MORE from Michael O’Shea: Why Isn’t Poland Smiling? Just Ask the Protesting Farmers Attacked by Police Last Week.) In some ways, the landscape is emblematic of the modern West. Slovakian society is politically divided; Fico even seemed to predict an assassination attempt on a high government official a month before the shooting. Wealthy Bratislava, the country’s political and economic hub, which sits less than an hour from Vienna, reliably votes in line with Brussels federalist principles. The rural, more-religious central and eastern regions are less confident this serves their interests.  Debates over populism also should seem familiar. Fico, who sports the mug of a hockey enforcer and possesses considerable political and personal baggage, is serving his fourth term as prime minister. He has inhabited enough parts of the political spectrum to defy easy classification. Survey a few Western media articles, and you’ll see a myriad of descriptors: left-wing, center-left, left-wing nationalist, right-wing, populist. Of these, only the last is largely accurate. Even his number of terms as prime minister poses problems for journalists: many articles claim this is his third stint. Fico also confronts the familiar accusation of pro-Russia sympathies, a talking point that arguably superseded discussion of his health in the days after the shooting. Foreign Policy’s pre-election categorization of “anti-Europe, pro-Russia” is characteristic for the Western establishment press.  The setting for these events is also uniquely Slovakian. Questions of independence and federalism are prominent in Slovakia’s history and politics. After an abortive period of independence during World War II, the country gained its long-awaited permanent independence after splitting from Czechoslovakia in 1993. The timing and degree of support for the divorce among that era’s politicians still color Slovakian politics today.  Most of the country’s architectural gems date from the Habsburg era, an enduring protestation of the twentieth century’s convulsions. Cession of territory to the Hungarians and reunification with the Czechs both materialized in the last century. Just a decade after gaining independence, Slovakia joined the EU and began ceding federal powers to Brussels, raising the question of what it was all for. It’s an environment that privileges the status quo. In this context, Fico’s longevity is logical. Unlike in neighboring countries, where Christian democrats and nationalists have united on the Right, and socialists, former communists, and liberals have coalesced on the Left, Slovakia has remained fragmented. Governments often fracture and collapse. It can be difficult to determine right from left, or who is allied with whom. Last year Fico prevailed and formed a government with only 22.95 percent of the vote; by comparison, in neighboring Poland, the Law & Justice party’s plurality of 35.4 percent left if out of government. Fico thrives in this environment.  Last year’s triumph occurred after Slovakia astoundingly endured almost a full year without an elected government. When the previous government resigned after a vote of no-confidence, left-wing President Zuzana Čaputová delayed calling elections in the hope that time would aid her political allies. She appointed a caretaker technocratic government that failed to gain parliamentary approval or deliver meaningful policy outcomes. Despite having noted economist Ľudovít Ódor at the helm, the ostensibly apolitical, technocratic government oversaw spiraling inflation, economic stagnation, and consistent weapon shipments to neighboring Ukraine, all which Fico decried. For Americans — and even Western Europeans — the war in Ukraine can consist of lines on a map and theoretical narratives about freedom and democracy. For Slovakians, the neighboring war is an omnipresent burden. Like their counterparts in Poland and elsewhere, Slovakian farmers are struggling with the reality of cheap Ukrainian agricultural imports. Food and energy prices are debilitating. Cyrillic advertisements on Bratislava buses attest to substantial demographic developments. The country has suffered one of Europe’s highest inflation rates since the war began. The technocratic government committed a faux pas by refusing direct rescue to Slovak tourists stranded by last summer’s Greek wildfires, while simultaneously donating military aircraft to Ukraine. Fico ran the ideal campaign for those circumstances. Western journalists and politicians perceived fealty to Moscow, while Slovakian voters sensed empathy for their grievances. Just a half-year after restoring Fico to office, Slovakian voters passed on a chance to check the prime minister’s power. In April’s presidential race to replace the outgoing Čaputová, ostensible Fico ally Peter Pellegrini (a onetime prime minister who previously broke with Fico and formed his own party) defeated the consensus Brussels choice by a comfortable six points. The opposition has resorted to catastrophizing. Progressive Slovakia’s ads for the upcoming European parliamentary elections vow: They can’t have everything! We will keep Slovakia in Europe.  Brussels holds a decidedly stronger hand than domestic opposition forces. Frustrated by the choices of Slovakian voters, the European Commission has threatened rule-of-law infringement procedures resembling those deployed against Hungary and Poland. Once again, the contrast with Poland is instructive. European Commissioner Ursula von der Leyen just closed proceedings against Slovakia’s northern neighbor in a thinly veiled gesture to political ally Donald Tusk and his newly installed pro-EU government. How the Slovakian tension with Brussels will develop after the shooting is anyone’s guess.  Paradoxically, Slovakia, with all its complexities and contradictions, presents an ideal laboratory for observing the state of Western liberal democracy. Fico represents delivering to voters what they want. Brussels, cheered on by Bratislava’s professional-managerial class, purports to give them what they need. “[T]his is how parliamentary democracy works,” wrote Slovakian journalist Eva Čobejová. “It upholds the will of the people, not the enlightened ideas of a few intelligent people.” (READ MORE: Poland’s Liberal-Democracy Has Adopted Martial Law) Komárno, in the heart of Slovakia’s ethnically Hungarian southwest, boasts the quirky Courtyard of Europe, an Epcot-style pavilion showcasing Europe’s countries and regions. Days after the shooting, several men gathered there before a projector screen to watch the Slovakia national hockey team defeat France at the World Championships. They chattered in Hungarian while attentively cheering their team. It was a fitting snapshot of a Slovakia that, like its prime minister, defies easy characterization.  The post Robert Fico, Consummate Survivor appeared first on The American Spectator | USA News and Politics.