Reuters
Slovak opposition party leader Michal Simecka, who described an assassination attempt on Prime Minister Robert Fico this week as an attack on democracy, said on Friday he that his wife and child had received death threats. His experience is not uncommon, a measure of the extreme political and personal animosities in Slovakia and across Europe that formed the backdrop to the shooting of Fico, who was still in intensive care, two days after being shot at close range. Slovaks like Lubos Oswald, a 41-year-old councillor in Handlova, Slovakia, where the shooting took place, felt a tragedy may have been in the making following years of deepening splits within the population and toxic political debate.