Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico has accused Czech politicians and media of meddling with Slovak internal affairs.

“I can find tens of interferences of Czech politicians into internal politics [in Slovakia] and just as tens of attacks on the Prime Minister of Slovakia which spread through Czech media like cancer,” Fico stated during a press conference on January 27.

Last week, in the wake of a no-confidence motion against himself, Fico claimed “a coup” is taking place against his government involving opposition, NGOs and “funding from abroad”. He cited intelligence reports without giving any public details and ultimately discouraged the opposition from taking part in the behind-the-door no-confidence parliamentary session.

Fico’s left-right cabinet is also facing an existential crisis after both of his coalition partners, conservative centre-left Hlas and far-right SNS, started to negotiate with rebel legislators over further support for the cabinet.

On Friday, 60,000 rallied against Fico's pro-Kremlin turn in Bratislava alone, and a combined 120,000 rallied across Slovakia in the largest protest since 2018, when street mass protests following the killing of journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancé chased Fico from power.      

Fico remains defiant, rejecting calls to resign and stepping up his aggressive rhetoric and allegations of foreign interference. To divert attention away from his critics, Fico said he wants to amend the Slovak constitution so it recognises only two genders.

“We have to return to healthy reason. Nobody can dictate to us that marriage can be concluded also between a cat and a dog,” Fico claimed.

He described the proposed changes to the constitution as a barrier "against progressivism" and claimed that he was already in talks with the opposition party, Christian Democratic KDH, over the amendments. 

Fico also alleged Czech politicians are smearing his ally, populist billionaire Andrej Babiš and his surging ANO party.   

“Nobody is doing anything about it [alleged meddling] because attacks on Robert Fico in the Czech Republic are supposed to serve mainly to smear Andrej Babiš,” Fico claimed.

“In the Czech Republic, you are creating an idea that ‘watch out’ Andrej Babiš will be just like Robert Fico,” he added.

Babiš and Fico regularly exchange loud messages of support. In 2023, Babiš even breached Slovak electoral campaign rules when he backed Fico and the Smer party on his Facebook profile during voting.  

ANO party has been dominant in the Czech polls ahead of the upcoming parliamentary elections in the autumn of this year.

The latest STEM poll for CNN Prima News from January 26 shows ANO would collect 34.9%, far ahead of the second-placed SPOLU (18.2%) joint list of three ruling coalition parties, centrist ruling coalition Mayors and Independents (STAN, 11.1%), far right SPD 8.5%, liberal Pirate Party (6.7%), and the red-brown STAČILO! (5%) list led by the Czech Communist Party.   

Under these figures, ruling coalition parties would combine for 71 deputies, while ANO would collect 89 deputies. SPD’s 19 deputies could pave the way back to power for Babiš though the ex-PM claimed he prefers to score high enough with ANO to secure one party majority.

Babiš has led a contact-intensive campaign touring the country’s poorer regions while also launching online interactive communication with his sympathisers, inviting them to share their views in online party forums.