Abstract
The continual wave of protests following this heinous act unleashed energy and democratic fervour that surprised many who had been sceptical about Slovakia’s willingness to stand up against the populist and corrupt political establishment.
Three weeks after the murder, Prime Minister Robert Fico was forced to resign as the protests gained intensity. There were repeated attempts to suppress the investigation but a trail leading to Fico’s office made his position untenable.
His clumsy attempt to imitate Viktor Orbán’s strategy in Hungary by portraying philanthropist George Soros as being behind the protests backfired, leaving him ridiculed. Moreover, during 2018, police and the courts finally exposed some of the politically connected corruption, and a few perpetrators have been tried and convicted. Previously, those accused of corruption had been exonerated by the system.
Thus Slovakia in 2019 seems somewhat more hopeful, in contrast with grim developments in neighbouring Hungary and Poland, yet the country is at a crossroads - and not for the first time. It was in a similar quandary before. Half a century ago, it was not clear whether any reforms from 1968 would be preserved. In 1969, a purge by the new administration extinguished hopes of reforms, silenced the press and forced society to remain docile until the Velvet Revolution two decades later.
Could Slovakia learn a lesson from 1969? Could that failure indicate the direction this small and tested central European country might take in 2019?
In August 1968, Slovakia, then part of Czechoslovakia, was invaded by its Warsaw Pact “allies”. It was a shock for all of us because we believed that “socialism with a human face”, as the reforms of 1968 had been called, had been positive and progressive.
The reforms of the Prague Spring, led by Alexander Dubček, a Slovak, were quashed, and there was a Soviet-sponsored restoration of communist “normalcy”, led by another Slovak, Gustav Husák, who supervised the purge. The political leadership and the population facing Leonid Brezhnev’s Soviet Union had been much too naive: an empire cannot allow “socialism with a human face”.
The protests following the invasion a Gandhi-type resistance, although initially marked by violence, gradually failed to sustain momentum. Odd as it might sound today, we believed that through protests we could force the occupiers out.
The most significant development was the gradual silence and censorship of the media, which had initially been quite free and outspoken against the invasion. Eventually, the censored media was transformed into the voice of the occupiers, and the population became lost and misinformed.
In fact, the main message of Jan Palach – who self-immolated in Wenceslas Square, Prague, in January 1969 – was to appeal to his fellow citizens to resist and sustain the togetherness against the occupiers. His funeral and our mourning was the second blow to Czechs and Slovaks. We felt betrayed and powerless. The feeling of mass humiliation invaded our national consciousness.
One could argue that the prolonged resistance and protests of 2018 were an echo of that failed historical resistance. Even though these protests were organised by the younger generation, all generations have been present in public squares, as if to say: “We do not want to be humiliated by ruthless politicians again.”
At the time of his murder and that of his fiancée, Kuciak was investigating the corrupt activities of the Italian mafia in Slovakia, allegedly in collusion with criminals and Slovak politicians, and most notably in relation to the misuse of EU funds. The first reaction of senior politicians and the national police chief was to trivialise the murders, suggesting that it might have been the action of a drugs dealer they were doing business with.
With startling vulgarity, Fico, the then prime minister, turned up at a press conference with €1 million in cash (the equivalent of $1.1 million), supposedly as a reward that would be paid for information leading to the arrest of the perpetrators. The public was shocked.
The next day, in an act of solidarity, all the main newspapers published Kuciak’s unfinished article; the trail he had been following led, among other destinations, directly to the prime minister’s office. Kuciak’s article revealed how former topless model Maria Trošková was employed as an “adviser” in that office. She had no qualifications to be a political adviser to the prime minister and, in addition, Kuciak revealed that Trošková was a business partner and perhaps a mistress of an Italian mafia associate, Antonino Vadala.
It was Kuciak’s article and Fico’s bizarre press conference, with its mafia-style cash on the table, that led a handful of young students to organise protests calling for a proper investigation of the murders, and into suspicions of widespread corruption in Slovakia. Students Karolína Farská and Juraj Šeliga became the symbols of the protest movement Za slušné Slovensko (For a decent Slovakia) that organised protests by tens of thousands of people in every major Slovak city. The protests did not cease after Fico’s resignation in 2019, continuing as the coalition government led by his party remained in office.
The movement used social media to organise the protests. But it was the free press that sustained the momentum during 2018 through a continual exposure of political corruption and the inaction of state institutions that were supposed to uphold the rule of law.
In addition, the investigation of the murders continued in earnest as the police were freed from the shackles of political interference. As a result, the murderers have been caught and businessman Marian Kočner, has been arrested and charged with ordering both murders.
Kočner had been exposed in numerous articles by Kuciak as a mafia-style criminal and embezzler, colluding with politicians, police and a former chief prosecutor. He was well connected with politicians in every administration and, before his arrest, had been protected from within the highest political circles. We can only hope that his trial will start the widespread exposure of political corruption.
The experience of 2018 and the memory of past struggles, defeats and victories provide some hope that Slovakia can continue to resist the forces of populism and nationalism. However, anti-immigrant sentiment appears to be shared by a large segment of the public and promoted by politicians.
Slovak society’s first liberating and then tragic experience during 1968-69 provides a lesson for 2019. Civil society in Slovakia has steadily learned from its past defeats. And after the overthrow of its first post-communist strongman, Vladimír Mečiar, in 1998, there seems to be energy and momentum today to end the era of Fico.The pressure from outside has always been taken seriously in Slovakia. Critical statements about the circumstances of Kuciak’s murder by prominent Western media organisations are of utmost importance.
We can but hope that Slovakia, the bête noire of central Europe in the 1990s, could become a beacon of hope and an example for others now facing political crises on both sides of the former Iron Curtain.