Protests against Slovakia's authoritarian government

Demonstrators on National Uprising Square in Slovakian capital Bratislava voiced their anger against the coalition government once again this week, following continuing demos since last year.

The focus of protests in 2023 was on the government and judiciary's perceived failure to fight corruption, the country's Russia-friendly foreign policy, and interference in freedom of the press.

This time, measures taken by the Ministry of Culture seem to have triggered renewed protests, with many demonstrators calling for Culture Minister Martina Simkovicova and others to be fired.

Last week, Simkovicova dismissed Matej Drlicka, the general director of Slovakia's National Theater, and Alexandra Kusa, the director of the country's National Gallery, having already fired other important cultural figures.

In early summer, on the initiative of the Ministry of Culture, the public television and radio broadcaster RTVS was dissolved and replaced by an institution called STVR (Slovak Television and Radio), on which the government will be able to exert much more direct political pressure than before.

Overhaul of state institutions

These measures are part of Prime Minister Robert Fico's overhaul of state institutions. In the ruling coalition, his nominally social democratic Smer-SD shares power with the social democratic Hlas-SD and the right-wing nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS).

It is the fourth time that Fico has held the office of prime minister. He was forced to resign from the position in 2018 after being accused of corruption and ties to organized crime in the wake of the murder of the journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova.

Having come back to power last year, Fico is apparently trying to secure his position along the lines of his friend and counterpart Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Culture Minister Simkovicova and the chief of staff at the ministry, Lukas Machala, are from the SNS. In a discussion about the new state-sponsored broadcaster, Machala was asked whether non-conventional views, such as those of people who believe the Earth is flat, would be allowed airtime. He responded that it had not been proven that the Earth was round.

The Czech Republic's public broadcaster has officially terminated its cooperation with the station in Bratislava out of concern for journalistic standards.

Machala has also expressed antisemitic views, the chemtrail conspiracy theory, and his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Simkovicova has expressed similar views to her fellow far-right party colleague. In an interview for the online news site topky.sk, she criticized so-called "LGBTQ+ ideology": "Europe is dying out, babies are not being born because of the excessive number of LGBTQ+ [people]. And the strange thing is [that it's happening] with the white race." 

Methods reminiscent of the Gestapo

The Slovak writer Michal Hvorecky summarized the situation to private broadcaster TA3 as follows: "The ministry is systematically removing our best cultural managers from leading positions and replacing them with staff close to the minister and her party people, with people who represent the same far-right ideology."

After the dismissal, despite protests from employees of Zuzana Liptakova, the elected director of the Bibiana, International House of Art for Children, and Katarina Kristofova, director of the Slovak National Library, the Culture Ministry has continued to exert its influence on flagship institutions.

Last week, the head of the National Theatre, Matej Drlicka, was dismissed virtually overnight. According to media reports, his notice was handed to him by a female ministry official accompanied by two burly men early in the morning while he was still in his bathrobe. He later compared the procedure to methods used by the Gestapo.

Just a day later, it was the turn of Alexandra Kusa from the National Gallery, who was replaced without a hearing by a so-called crisis manager. Three members of the Fund for the Slovak Arts Council (FPU) were also dismissed. 

Censorship can be felt

Censorship and self-censorship are already beginning to be felt. The new broadcaster STVR was not allowed to broadcast an interview with the dismissed theater director Drlicka. Only an interview with Machala was aired.

In a statement, the three parties of the ruling coalition described the protests as "the inability of liberal media outlets, political NGOs and the opposition to accept the results of the parliamentary elections" and warned there would be consequences should there be a "further attack on representatives of the governing coalition."

In May, Prime Minister Fico narrowly survived an assassination attempt. It is now known that the perpetrator was a 71-year-old man with confused political views, but many believe the incident has beeninstrumentalized to clamp down on democratic protest.

Just a few weeks after the attack, Fico said that the perpetrator had been encouraged by the "unimaginably frustrated" opposition and "anti-government" media outlets in Slovakia. He added that these were backed by foreign powers such as the US-Hungarian billionaire George Soros.

Hungarian Prime Minister Orban has often presented Soros, who is Jewish, as a puppet-master pulling the strings of the world, a classic antisemitic trope.

This article was originally written in German.