The populist swagger; the anti\u2011Brussels rhetoric; the sudden rediscovery of \u201cnational sovereignty\u201d whenever EU consensus becomes inconvenient: Calling Robert Fico \u201cthe new Orb\u00e1n\u201d is tempting, and with it come fears that with Victor Orb\u00e1n gone, the Slovak Prime Minister will become the next huge thorn in the European Union\u2019s side. But here\u2019s the difference. The ousted Hungarian Prime Minister had 16 uninterrupted years to build his power base, entrenching his model of \u201cilliberal democracy.\u201d Fico\u2019s authority rests on far more fragile foundations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like Orb\u00e1n, Fico casts the EU as a meddling technocracy, out of touch with \u201cordinary people.\u201d He calls out imagined elites. And he, too, drifts toward the Kremlin\u2019s gravitational pull \u2014 he\u2019s the only EU leader planning to attend World War II victory celebrations in Moscow next month. His insistence that Ukraine will not join NATO on his watch is straight out of Orb\u00e1n\u2019s playbook. There\u2019s also the shared habit of weaponizing history. Orb\u00e1n has long used Hungarian historical trauma as a political instrument. Fico\u2019s move to criminalize criticism of a post-World War II law assigning collective guilt to Hungarians for their nation\u2019s alliance with Nazi Germany also attempts to turn historical sensitivity into political capital.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But here\u2019s where the comparison ends. Orb\u00e1n\u2019s unbroken four-term tenure and a succession of supermajorities allowed his government to rewrite Hungary\u2019s constitution, reshape the judiciary, consolidate the media, and create a patronage network that kept him in power \u2014 until it suddenly didn\u2019t on April 12. All empires crumble at some point. But for 16 years, his power base at home allowed him to act as a spoiler on the EU stage. Fico is more vulnerable. He depends on a coalition partner to stay in power, and he doesn\u2019t have the institutional depth that gave Orb\u00e1n\u2019s FIDESZ its broad power base. And Slovakia is more dependent on EU funds than Hungary is. So he can talk the talk in Brussels. But he cannot walk Orb\u00e1n\u2019s walk. He is a Slovak political perennial, at least for now. But unlike Orb\u00e1n, one who comes and goes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Until he\u2019s gone forever?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It might be worth remembering a Slovak leader whose grip in the early days of post-communism was stronger than Fico\u2019s. Yet even his attempts to keep Slovakia from aligning with the West failed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If Vladimir Meciar, why not Robert Fico?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can find more of my writing and reporting here: The populist swagger; the anti\u2011Brussels rhetoric; the sudden rediscovery of \u201cnational sovereignty\u201d whenever EU consensus becomes inconvenient: Calling Robert Fico \u201cthe new Orb\u00e1n\u201d is tempting, and with it come fears that with Victor Orb\u00e1n gone, the Slovak Prime Minister will become the next huge thorn in the European Union\u2019s side. But here\u2019s the difference. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1565,"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/1565"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgejahn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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