Slovak opposition leaders called on Minister of Health Kamil Šaško to resign after Slovakia refrained from voting for the ratification of the international treaty on prevention and control of pandemics at the World Health Organisation (WHO) meeting in Geneva on May 19. Slovakia was among just 11 states to reject the ratification.

Prime Minister Robert Fico and other officials from the senior ruling Smer party adopted a hardline conspiratorial talk on Covid-19, backed also by the Slovak National Party (SNS), as Smer moved deep into national conservative waters to appeal to anti-establishment and radicalised voters.   

As bne IntelliNews reported earlier this week, Fico said his left-right cabinet has agreed not to back the pandemic agreement in a per rollam decision on May 16.

“With this decision, PM Fico and his cabinet knowingly risk the health of the Slovak population,” Michal Šimečka, leader of the largest opposition party, liberal Progressive Slovakia, said at a press conference shared on his Facebook social media page, warning that Slovakia is slipping into further international isolation.

Šaško, of the Hlas party, “should file a resignation immediately,” Branislav Gröhling, leader of another opposition party, neoliberal SaS, was quoted as saying by the country’s state broadcaster. The opposition populist right-wing coalition Slovakia also called on Šaško to resign.

The WHO ratification of the pandemic treaty was backed by 124 states, while only 11 refrained from the voting, including Iran and Russia, but also EU members Italy and Poland, STVR noted.

Šaško countered that “despite the May 19 vote, the treaty is yet to be discussed further at [the] WHO” and that Slovakia will be part of these discussions, adding that “only after the end of regular discussions on the international level we as a country will adopt a clear position”.

Shortly after coming to power in 2023, the cabinet appointed controversial conspiracy spreader Peter Kotlár as government envoy tasked with reviewing the measures implemented against Covid-19 by previous cabinets during the pandemic years.

Kotlár and other radicals were instrumental in Slovakia's unparalleled stance of being the lone country of over 190 countries which disagreed with the new WHO regulations last June, and became notoriously known for claiming there was no Covid-19 pandemic.

Last October, Kotlár was slammed by the Slovak Epidemiological and Vaccinological Society (SEVS SLS), for his review of the response to the Covid-19 pandemic, particularly for his claims that the pandemic was started artificially.

Slovak disinformation analysts have been ringing alarm bells over the high proliferation of conspiracies into the mainstream politics for some time, and the COVID-19 pandemic has been a major catalyst for pandemic and vaccination-linked conspiracies.

In 2022, the Bratislava-based security think tank Globsec published an unsettling finding that 54% of Slovaks believe in conspiracies as part of its Globsec Trends 2022 report on CEE amid the war in Ukraine.  

Fico and his Smer party, including hoaxers such as Lubos Blaha, have become dependent on the radical anti-establishment electorate after moving deep into the national conservative waters after the fall of Smer’s previous cabinet in 2018 amid mass demonstrations following the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak.