Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico remained in a serious condition on Thursday after doctors managed to stabilize him following an assassination attempt a day earlier.

Fico was shot several times in an attack that is believed to have had a political motive.  

President-elect Peter Pellegrini said on Thursday that he had visited Fico in hospital.

"He is able to speak but only a few sentences and then he is really, really tired... The situation is very critical," Pellegrini said outside the hospital in the central city of Banska Bystrica. 

"The doctors asked me to make a really very short visit," he said, warning that "very difficult hours and days" still lay ahead.

Suspect charged, thought to have acted alone

The suspected shooter, who was detained at the scene, is a 71-year-old man from the town of Levice, according to Interior Minister Matus Sutaj Estok.

The man was charged with the shooting on Thursday, with Estok saying investigators believed he was "lone wolf" who is "not a member of a radicalized political group, either right-wing or left-wing." 

The attack happened after a Cabinet meeting as Fico went outside to shake hands with members of the public, with one of the shots hitting him in the chest. 

Authorities said there was "a clear political motivation" behind the assassination attempt.

Wounds 'complicated,' says deputy

"During the night doctors managed to stabilize the patient's condition," Defense Minister Robert Kalinak said.

"Unfortunately the condition continues to be very serious due to the complicated nature of the wounds, but we all want to believe firmly that we will succeed in managing the situation," said Kalinak, who also serves as deputy prime minister.

It was reported that five shots were fired in front of the House of Culture in Handlova, a town that lies almost 200 kilometers (125 miles) northeast of the capital Bratislava. Kalinak said four bullets hit Fico.

Local television station RTV Prievidza published a video of the incident, which shows a man pushing against a fence before shooting Fico from close range.

Fico was immediately flown to hospital by helicopter and was in surgery for five hours.

Slovak President Zuzana Caputova, a political rival of Fico, appealed for calm and described the assassination attempt as an "attack on democracy."

Fico's rival warns against 'polarization'

In an interview with DW, former Slovak Prime Minister Eduard Heger, who was in office from April 2021 to May 2023, condemned the attack on his political rival, Fico, saying that a battle of ideas and solutions should not become a "battle of people."

Fico's government, elected last September, had stirred controversy by stopping arms deliveries to Ukraine, and it has plans to amend the penal code to eliminate a special anti-graft prosecutor. The government also wants to take control of public media. 

But Heger said he worried that political debate amid such disagreements, from people on all sides, was deteriorating in tone and might be spilling over to members of the public.

"We see more and more that the politicians step into more and more violent and aggressive language and I think we need to stop with this," Heger said. "Citizens observe the action of the public figures and if they see aggression going among them then it's easy for them to follow."

According to Heger, the political debate in the run-up to the presidential election, won by Fico's ally Peter Pellegrini, had been "very dirty." 

"I'm saying that the polarization at the moment — not just in Slovakia but we see it around Europe and I think around the world — is still growing," the former prime minister said, adding that such events force the politicians to stop and rethink their actions.

rc, msh/dh (AFP, dpa, Reuters)