Why assassination attempt on Slovakia's PM Robert Fico will ...

Here's something you can't debate: Robert Fico knows how to win elections. He's done it four times.

Here's something you can: it's how you win them that's important.

This week's assassination attempt on Slovakia's longest-serving prime minister has shone a light on deep political divisions in the country.

On one side, pro-European interventionalism, strong anti-corruption guardrails and a free press; on the other, nationalism, anti-immigration and the media cast as the enemy.

Amid the chaos, there could be a lesson for several other world leaders.

Officials have described Mr Fico's shooting as politically motivated.

"But that's not important now," says Milan Nic, a former Slovak government adviser from when Mr Fico was in opposition. He describes the incident as not just an attack on an elected prime minister, but on the country's democracy itself.

Interior Minister Matus Sutaj-Estok on Thursday said the suspect was a "lone wolf" not aligned to any party or group.

A person is detained in the city of Handlova after the assassination attempt on Robert Fico.(Reuters: Radovan Stoklasa)

Mr Fico, who remains in a serious but stable condition, is a populist. People either love him, or loathe him.

He's lashed journalists as "an organised crime group",  railed against migrants — particularly Muslims — and branded adoption by same-sex couples "perversion".

"He's a very polarising figure. Of course he was driving some of these emotions and radicalisation because it played into his hands," says Mr Nic.

"Unfortunately, this is not only happening in Slovakia. The repercussions were there, but it's vibrated around Europe and beyond."

Should the attack provide a devastating reminder for politicians the world over?

Slovakia's outgoing president Zuzana Čaputová — the country's head of state — made her view clear in the hours after it.

She said something "so serious had happened that we can't even realise it yet".

"The hateful rhetoric we witness in society leads to hateful acts."

Rescue workers take Robert Fico to a hospital in Banska Bystrica on Wednesday.(TASR: Jan Kroslak via AP))

Mr Fico is not alone in using a firebrand political style to attract votes.

Donald Trump won the White House on the back of a promises to "Make America Great Again" and build a "big, beautiful" border wall with Mexico. When he was defeated in the 2020 presidential election, he claimed it was rigged. His supporters stormed the Capitol.

In India, Narendra Modi's blending of religion and politics has made him — according to multiple surveys — the world's most popular leader. It's also led to attacks on minorities, media outlets and opposition figures.

Benjamin Netanyahu has been Israel's prime minister on-and-off for more than 16 years, but has presided over enormous division in that time. Critics say his plans to overhaul the judicial system will weaken government oversight. Then there's the war in Gaza.

Mr Fico shares an ability to divide, rather than unite, with those leaders, but there's a key difference: his political longevity has been underpinned by a readiness to change.

Since gaining independence in 1993, Slovakia has moved away from its Soviet-aligned past and reshaped as a modern democracy. By 2004, it had joined both NATO and the European Union.

Mr Fico's own career has mirrored the transformation. He joined the Communist Party in the 1980s, became an MP in 1992 representing an offshoot of it, before co-founding his own left-wing nationalist party, Smer.

"[At the time he was shot] he was leading a coalition government of three parties that include a far-right party as a junior member," Mr Nic says.

In 2018, Mr Fico resigned as prime minister over a political crisis prompted by the murders of an investigative journalist — who had been investigating high-level corruption — and his fiance.

His popularity plummeted.

"I'm not going anywhere. Don't worry," Mr Fico told the country's then-president Andrej Kiska.

He wasn't lying. He managed to rebuild his image, and won office again in September last year.

"He is very skilled politician and a populist," says Peter Sabo, a reporter at Slovak news outlet Aktuality.

"I think he and his party have seen that the people who are vulnerable to hoaxes and disinformation and these things, are easy prey for votes."

Slovak journalist Peter Sabo has been watching his country's politics closely.(ABC News: Andrew Greaves)

Mr Fico's recipe for success has enraged plenty of constituents.

Xénia Makarová, a deputy director at Slovakia's Stop Corruption Foundation, says the leader's aggressive rhetoric had left the country more polarised than ever. 

"Unfortunately I was expecting something like this attack because we have previous experiences with politically or conspiracy motivated attacks here," she says.

During Europe's refugee crisis in 2016, and while he was in the midst of a re-election campaign, Mr Fico railed against the EU's migration policies as PM.

"The idea of multicultural Europe failed and the natural integration of people who have another way of life, way of thinking, cultural background and most of all religion, is not possible," he said at the time, pointing to terror attacks in Germany and France.

Later, when in opposition, he turned his focus to COVID, and often fronted rowdy opposition rallies against government restrictions. At one, he was arrested.

The war in Ukraine — a country which Slovakia shares a border with — provided another opportunity.

His slogan "not one more round of ammunition" for Kyiv had cut-through with his base, and observers attribute it as being a key reason behind his election victory last year. The policy has put him at odds with the United States and the EU.

Xénia Makarová was not surprised by the assassination attempt.(ABC News: Andrew Greaves)

Behind all that, his hatred of the media has been unabated.

In 2022, Mr Fico told a press conference he was "convinced there's an organised crime group of journalists in Slovakia".

In April, his government approved a controversial blueprint to scrap public broadcaster RTVS and replace it with a state-run set-up.

While many voters support the policy platform, Ms Makarová contends the overhauls are "happening without public and professional discussion".

"Big changes should not be made in this way," she says.

To his supporters, Mr Fico is a freedom fighter who gets things done, challenges the establishment and stands up to Europe's bureaucracy. 

His detractors cast him as a dog-whistling autocrat-in-waiting, hell-bent on tearing down the public institutions they hold dear and undermining democracy.

Any middle ground appears to have evaporated.

In that way, the events of the past week in Slovakia, Mr Nic says there is a warning for leaders like Mr Fico elsewhere.

"This could have happened to anybody," he says.

"Unfortunately, the threats to politicians became too frequent in Slovakia, and they were not taken seriously."