Slovak prime minister 'will survive' after being shot

What happened

Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico was shot five times Wednesday as he addressed supporters outside in Handlova. Doctors said early Thursday he is in stable but serious condition after surgery. Fortunately, the five-hour operation "went well and I guess in the end he will survive," Deputy Prime Minister Tomas Taraba told the BBC.

Who said what

The suspected gunman, identified in local media as a 71-year-old writer and activist, is in custody, and a primary investigation found "a clear political motivation," Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok said.

Estok "did not specify what the motivation was," The Associated Press said, but Fico's divisive "return to power last year on a pro-Russian, anti-American message" threatened to derail Slovakia's long-established democratic, "pro-Western course." 

What next?

Some politicians in Fico's Smer party have called this "a declaration of war," and it "will be a useful excuse for doing all the things they wanted to do" anyway, notably taking control of public media and weakening anticorruption tools, Pavol Hardos, a political scientist at Bratislava's Comenius University, said to The Washington Post.

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