In a recent article in the Guardian Timothy Garton Ash argues that as it was premature to
consider the fall of the communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, then
triumph of liberal democracy, a beginning of development that would turn this triumph into
normal state of society, it would be similarly premature to think today about the triumph of anti-
liberal authoritarianism in the world. As a positive example, Garton Ash mentioned the fact that
“leading the democratic fightback in Central Europe today is Slovakia, a country that was
authoritarian laggard in the 1990s, and has more than its fair share of post-communist corruption
in recent years“. In this context, Garton Ash writes about the mass citizens‘ protests after the
murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée Martina Kušnírová in 2018 and
recalls “election this year of a liberal, pro-European president, Zuzana Čaputová“. [1]
Zuzana Čaputová‘s example is truly encouraging and gives real democrats the hope that even in
not very favorable conditions it is possible to obtain sufficient support from the population for a
decent policy without inciting hatred towards others, without giving unreasonable promises,
leading to unrealistic expectations of the people.
At the time when Garton Ash‘s article appeared, a massive stream of information was rolling
from the Slovak media to citizens about the facts related to activities of the prosecuted
businessman Marián Kočner. He was detained in 2018 and today is accused of organizing the
murder of Ján Kuciak.
What did these facts prove? They confirmed that Kočner managed to create a network, a sort of
rogue micro-empire, which included corrupt politicians, government officials, judges,
prosecutors, policemen, notaries, bailiffs, lawyers, journalists, former secret service’s agents and
eventually the assassins. The wide scope and precision with which Kočner created his micro-
empire, and the incredible personal commitment with which he expanded and managed it, are
breathtaking. Kočner watched the positions in the various judicial authorities and in the
management of state institutions, through his contacts he not only obtained the necessary
information, but also influenced the process of personal nominations and subsequently directed
the activities of public officials, whom he helped to get into the office.
Kočner has always been interested in “arranging” his own things, mostly in various financial
machinations and frauds (either at the expense of other private entrepreneurs or the state). Of
course, the main Kočner’s aim was a personal profit, an effort to get richer even more. However,
Kočner’s actions in fact influenced the overall situation in the judicial system (police, courts,
prosecutors) and, more broadly, in the system of constitutional institutions of the state, including
the government, ministries and parliament. This was not just about Kočner’s business, but the
functioning of the state as such. Carefully selected, prepared and motivated members of
Kočner’s network behaved in other cases similarly as they did in cases directly related to Kočner
– corrupt, factually illegal, and politically biased.
At some moment when the real extent of Kočner’s contacts and activities became evident, many
people get horrified by the considerations that Kočner’s rogue micro-empire might not be the only one operating in Slovakia, that similar rogue entities (though perhaps less brutal and
violent) may exist around other actors – individual entrepreneurs or financial and business
groups, with the intention of “arranging things” for their own benefit. Many shocking revelations
related to Kočner happened only due to the fact that within the investigation of Ján Kuciak’s
murder ordered by Kočner the police and prosecutors managed to get to encrypted
communications in his cell phone as well as to transcripts of the sound recordings made by
Kočner himself.
Without this technical success of the investigative team, there would hardly happen the
resignation of State Secretary of the Ministry of Justice and abduction of Vice-Speaker of
Parliament, the forced suspension of the former Prosecutor General, the suspension (albeit
temporary) of some prosecutors and judges, including the territorial courts’ chairmen. Almost all
of these persons had strong political backing in the ruling party Smer-SD, whose chairman
Robert Fico defended his party’s nominees until the last moment, challenging in every possible
way the accuracy of evidences presented by the police, by prosecutors’ offices and the media.
Only when the specialized criminal court confirmed the authenticity of Kočner’s encrypted
communication and found legal the way of obtaining it by the police in the ongoing investigatory
process, Fico had to step back from his adamant position.
Nevertheless, only a part of Kočner's communication has been published so far, especially that
related to the murder of Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová as well as related to his attempts to
fraudulently (through fake bills) get the control over the private TV channel Markiza, one of the
most influential media in the country. Since Kočner has appeared in many other business cases,
we can only guess what all the tens of thousands of text messages between him and his
“partners” conceal. Not to mention what could appear in the communication of other Slovak
“oligarchs” who tried to create favorable conditions for their own businesses. For example, in the
communication of such person as Jaroslav Haščák, the head of the financial group Penta, one of
the main actors of Gorilla case (2006), which re-emerged in 2019 thanks to the publication of a
sound records made by the secret service SIS.
It is quite possible that similarly as Haščák in Gorilla case or Kočner in his fraudulent “projects”,
other strong men of Slovak business, their political patrons and servants in the judiciary are
“arranging their things”.
The state of the rule of law in Slovakia in 2019 tells a lot about the wider context of the Slovak
transformation path. On the one hand, Slovakia thanks to ousting of authoritarian populist
Vladimír Mečiar from power has been considered as a success story of advocating and defending
the liberal-democratic values, on the other hand, the illiberal regression of democracy manifested
itself differently than in some other countries, where efforts to change the institutional
foundations of the democratic regime came to the fore (for example, in Hungary or Poland). In
Slovakia after 1998, it was less about open political authoritarianism, more about the systematic
building of a clientelist-corruption system by national populists led by Smer-SD, which has been
a three-time ruling party since 2006.
The peculiar ideological and personal characteristics of Slovak national populists, on the one
hand, allowed Slovak society in the 21 st century to cope more easily with the danger of an open
fall into the mud of authoritarianism (and fortunately, such a fall has so far been prevented), on
the other hand, they have undermined the efforts of civic and democratic forces to neutralize the
corruption that has nestled in the vital sectors of society, erodes the state from within,
diminishes people's confidence in democracy, and chases extremist voices.
Unlike their Hungarian and Polish counterparts, Slovak national populists have no vision of the
development of the state or society that they would like to implement in the long run. From time
to time, they come up with some (mostly historical) narratives, which can serve as a litmus test
of their way of thinking, but mainly these are caricature “visions”. Although Slovak populists are
often illiberal in the governance, they have not created any comprehensive illiberal concept that
would modify itself into original “theoretical” form. It is no coincidence that the peak of their
“conceptual” work is a simple replica or rather a self-recognized plagiarism: Andrej Danko,
speaker of the Slovak Parliament and leader of Slovak National Party, recently confessed that he
was very impressed by Viktor Orban’s vision of building the illiberal state and that he, Danko,
would like to construct something like that in Slovakia if he would possess the same political
power as Orbán in Hungary.
In reality, the concept of Slovak national populists are material goods. Their vision is to consume
and distribute benefits, especially to themselves and their clients, and what remains – to those
who are more likely to appreciate and to reward through support in elections
The absence of a coherent illiberal vision of the Slovak national-populist parties has saved the
country from the open authoritarian excesses in the last decade, but the setting up of the ruling
populists primarily to consumption of power and material benefits ultimately led Slovakia to the
situation when clientelism and corruption began to devour the primary functions of the state, in
particular the law enforcement system. And just on the wave of criticism of democracy as an
allegedly “corrupt system” the right-wing extremist party ĽSNS is building its mobilization
strategies.
It should be noticed, however, that Slovak fascists do not criticize the corrupt officials. They do
the opposite – they attack civic activists and pro-democratic politicians who struggle against the
mafia and blame them in anti-Slovak conspiracy, calling them the “foreign agents”, the Soros’
allies. Fascists again show that they are on the side of actors of the largest corruption.
# [1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/30/democracy-europe-1989-berlin-wall-velvet-
revolutions-populists
Photo credit: © Transparency International EU, 2019
The article gives the views of the author, not the position of ‘Europe’s Futures
Ideas for Action’ project or the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM).