The Brief – Open wounds in the flesh of a nation

Political murders often happen in authoritarian countries, and even more often in dictatorships, but when an elected politician gets shot in a democratic country, it opens wounds in the nation’s society that are very hard to heal.

Although sixty years have passed, JFK’s assassination remains America’s national trauma. John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, was shot dead while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, on 22 November 1963.

It was already the age of television. Footage of the shooting (the famous Zapruder film) became part of the collective consciousness, not only of Americans. Commentators say JFK’s assassination demarcates the loss of faith in the American Dream, as the country lost the president who embodied most of those ideals.

The only therapy after a shock of this magnitude is to find the truth and deliver justice, but JFK will probably never get this retribution.

Many years later, I happened to be in Stockholm when – in the night of 28 February 1986 – Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was gunned down on Sveavägen avenue, after he left a nearby cinema with his wife and son.

I laid a flower and witnessed first-hand the shock and grief of the Swedes. It perdured also because the killer has never been found, and was revived again when Anna Lindh, the country’s foreign minister, was stabbed to death in a department store in central Stockholm on 10 September 2003. She died the next day.

Neither Palme nor Lindh were protected by bodyguards.

These murders dealt a double blow to Sweden’s open society, which, unlike in most other places, was not defined by high security and chauffeured ministerial cars.

After the end of the American Dream, this was the end of Sweden’s innocence.

2003 was also the year when Zoran Djindjic was shot dead by a sniper on a street in Belgrade. He was an outstanding politician and philosopher who served as Serbia’s prime minister from 2001 until his assassination on 12 March 2003.

His murder wasn’t really a surprise, as he had created many enemies with his determination to turn things around.

As NATO stated at the time, Djindjic was regarded by the West “as a reformer who had had the courage and vision to introduce difficult changes to make his country a full part of the Euro-Atlantic community”.

Twenty years later, Serbia is not out of the woods yet and criminal authoritarianism that killed him now feels quite cozy because it has had all the time it needed to adapt and become acceptable to the West.

The shooting of Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico on Wednesday by a lone gunman in the city of Handlová in Western Slovakia has sent shockwaves across the country, Europe, and the world.

We wouldn’t compare this shooting with previously mentioned murders, except perhaps in one aspect: It is a terrible trauma for the Slovaks, who have already seen two terrible murders in recent years.

The political atmosphere in Slovakia has been particularly tense since 2018, when the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová led to one of the largest protests in Slovakia’s modern history and forced Fico to resign.

A brutal homophobic double murder in front of a bar in central Bratislava in October 2022 added to the impression that Slovakia is becoming a society where hate knows no limits.

While we hope for Fico’s recovery, we cannot fail to recall that he was among those who had targeted LGBTIQ community members, and journalists, in Slovakia.

Fico himself acknowledged the increasing polarisation in a now-prophetic video where he voiced fears that a member of his government could be killed, claiming that the frustration of his political opponents could lead to a bad outcome.

We have seen such a prophecy before. According to Carla del Ponte, prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Djindjic predicted his own murder less than a month before the shooting.

This Brief will remain open-ended. Many things must still be said, many opinions heard. May Fico’s injuries heal rapidly but the healing of the wounds in Slovak society will take more time.

The Roundup

The European Commission initiated an investigation on Thursday into whether Meta, Facebook and Instagram’s parent company, has violated the Digital Services Act (DSA) concerning the protection of minors.

Slovakia’s president-elect and Prime Minister Robert Fico’s coalition partner, Peter Pellegrini, called on Thursday on all national parties to suspend or tone down campaigning ahead of European Parliament elections after Wednesday’s assassination attempt.

The Russian Ambassador to Slovakia Igor Bratchikov met secretly with controversial ruling party Smer lawmaker Tibor Gašpar in the Slovak parliament on Wednesday to discuss the war in Ukraine and cyber security before dabbling in pro-Kremlin narrative.

On Thursday, German authorities searched the premises of Petr Bystron, a top candidate for the far-right Alternative for Germany in June’s EU election, to investigate alleged bribes by Russian officials.

With 14% in the polls, Raphaël Glucksmann, the leader of the Socialist Party (PS) list, is making the defence of Ukraine the priority of his campaign, while remaining more nuanced on other international crises, such as the war in Gaza.

A permanent tax on European companies’ excess profits could generate more than €100 billion per year, or over half of the EU’s annual budget, according to a new report commissioned by the European Parliament’s Left Group.

On Wednesday, 15 EU countries published a joint working document calling on the European Commission to prioritise the decarbonisation of heating and cooling, to increase the EU’s energy independence and meet its climate targets.

Four Russian state media outlets will be added to the European Union’s blacklist, while other measures for the 14th sanctions package against Moscow are still in the early stages of discussion following a meeting of EU ambassadors on Wednesday.

Last but not least, to stay up to date on politics and election news, don’t miss this week’s edition of EU Elections Decoded.

Look out for…

• Economy Commissioner Paolo Gentiloni delivers concluding remarks via video message at Annual Conference of European Fiscal Board on Friday.
• Commission Vice President Vĕra Jourová in Estonia, meets with PM Kaja Kallas on Friday.
• Commissioner Thierry Breton visits Germany’s first prospect for ‘Net-Zero Acceleration Valley’ on Friday.

Views are the author’s

[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic/Alice Taylor]