THE RETURN to power of Robert Fico, Slovakia’s populist prime minister, has been a continuous succession of bitter conflicts ever since he was elected last September to his fourth term in office. On May 15th this took a savage turn, when an unknown assailant shot Mr Fico while he was greeting constituents in Handlova, a town 140km east of Bratislava, the capital. The attacker fired three or four shots before he was overpowered by police, according to Aktuality.sk, an independent news site. Mr Fico was rushed to hospital. That attacker was reportedly a 71-year-old from the region, but no other information has been released by police.