By Jan Lopatka
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) -&nbsp;Robert&nbsp;Fico, who won&nbsp;Slovakia's parliamentary&nbsp;election&nbsp;on Saturday by appealing to anti-western and&nbsp;pro-Russian&nbsp;sentiment, may lead the European Union nation for the fourth time after once again shifting&nbsp;political&nbsp;gears to appeal to a changing electorate.
During a three-decade career,&nbsp;Fico, 59, has skilfully weaved between&nbsp;pro-European mainstream and nationalistic anti-Brussels and anti-American positions while showing a willingness to change course depending on public opinion or changed&nbsp;political&nbsp;realities.
He has remained steady throughout his career, however, on&nbsp;promises to&nbsp;protect living standards of those left behind in a country where living standards for many are only slowly catching up to western Europe and where many hold relatively fond memories of a communist-era past.
"Fico&nbsp;is a technician of power, by far the best in&nbsp;Slovakia. He does not have a counterpart at the moment," said sociologist Michal Vasecka, from the Bratislava Policy Institute.
"Fico&nbsp;is always following opinion polls, understands what is happening" in society.
Yet&nbsp;Fico&nbsp;has embraced more extreme positions over the past four years that include attacks on western allies, pledges to stop military support for Kyiv, criticism of&nbsp;Russian&nbsp;sanctions and threats to veto any future NATO invitation for Ukraine.
His campaign call of "Not a single round" for Ukraine appealed to voters in the nation of 5.5 million where only a minority in the NATO member country believe Russia is at fault for the Ukraine war.
Fico, who analysts see inspired by Hungary's Viktor Orban, has said he has&nbsp;Slovak&nbsp;interests at heart and wants the war to end. Western allies and Ukraine say halting military aid to Kyiv would only help Russia.
"We see Viktor Orban as one of those European politicians who do not fear to openly defend the interests of Hungary and Hungarian people,"&nbsp;Fico&nbsp;told Reuters in emailed responses last month.
"He puts them in the first place. And that should be the role of an elected politician, to look after the interests of his voters and his country."
Fico&nbsp;has also railed against the country's liberal president, Zuzana Caputova, who sued him last month for spreading lies about her. He has labelled various opponents and NGO's as following instructions of U.S financier George Soros.
Born to a working-class family,&nbsp;Fico&nbsp;graduated with a law degree in 1986 and joined the then-ruling Communist party.
After the 1989 fall of Communist rule, he worked as a government lawyer, won a seat in parliament under the renamed Communist party, and represented&nbsp;Slovakia at the European Court for Human Rights.
Fico&nbsp;has run SMER-Social Democracy party since 1999 after establishing it to oppose the reformist centre-right cabinet.
He parlayed dissatisfaction with liberal economic reforms into his first&nbsp;election&nbsp;victory in 2006.
But he also kept the nation on course to adopt the euro in 2009 despite forming a government with nationalists.
His second cabinet won after&nbsp;another&nbsp;centre-right coalition broke up two years later, and a tough stance against migrants helped him win re-election&nbsp;in 2016. After that win, he declared he wanted&nbsp;Slovakia as part of the EU's core with France and Germany.
Those shifts in the past have given belief to foreign diplomats that he may find a pragmatic way with European and NATO partners again, especially given that a far-right party he may ally with under some scenarios did not win any seats on Saturday.
Fico's&nbsp;political&nbsp;fortunes faded in 2018 when journalist Jan Kuciak, who was investigating high-level graft, and his fiancee Martina Kusnirova were killed by a contract killer.
This fuelled mass&nbsp;protests against graft and&nbsp;Fico&nbsp;was forced to resign. SMER lost power in a 2020&nbsp;election&nbsp;to parties pledging to weed out corruption, and his party split.
Polling under 10%,&nbsp;Fico&nbsp;once sought to address voter fears during the coronavirus pandemic when he slammed government health measures.
"He became the most&nbsp;prominent&nbsp;political&nbsp;representative of a movement against face masks or vaccination," said&nbsp;political&nbsp;analyst Grigorij Meseznikov.
At the same time he a tapped into dissatisfaction with bickering in the ruling government and raised doubts with its&nbsp;pro-western course, chiming with&nbsp;pro-Russian&nbsp;narratives on social networks that had spread across&nbsp;Slovakia.
Fico&nbsp;also swatted away accusations of graft that have dogged his party during his&nbsp;political&nbsp;career. He was charged with criminal conspiracy in 2022 to use police and tax information on&nbsp;political&nbsp;foes -- charges he denied and which were later dropped.
&nbsp;
(Reporting by Jan Lopatka, Editing by Michael Kahn and Michael Perry)

you might like

Robert Fico, pro-Russian Slovak political heavyweight wins another election