The Slovak political scene is experiencing another earthquake in the form of an open confession of the former leading face of the Freedom and Solidarity party. Jana Bittó Cigániková decided to speak about the practices that, according to her, dominated the party after the change of leadership. In her sharp statement, she focused mainly on the popular Instagram profile Myšlienky Politikov, which has more than 130,000 followers. Although this site outwardly presents itself as an independent satirical platform in the style of the well-known Zomri project, Cigániková claims that the reality is completely different and that the current SaS is directly behind its operation.
According to MP this profile is not only for innocent humor, but has become a tool for a targeted subliminal campaign. The party is supposed to use it to celebrate its own representatives and at the same time to make aggressive attacks on opponents, while in the last period even the closest political partners from the opposition have become targets. Cigániková emphasizes that this is not a personal vendetta, although she herself faced attacks from the administrators of this profile after she refused to submit to new management regulations. According to her own words, if she wanted to do harm out of spite, she would have done it a long time ago, but now she considers it necessary to show the voters the true face of the “new SaS”.
The main impetus for this public disclosure was the behavior of her former colleagues in connection with the attacks of the government coalition on the family of Michal Šimečka. Cigániková sharply criticizes that SaS representatives joined the rhetoric of Robert Fico and Tibor Gašpar. Although he admits doubts about financing around Šimeček’s mother, he rejects the principle of collective guilt and considers it unacceptable for the opposition party to participate in the bullying of its partner. He sees this procedure as part of a broader strategy of the government’s Smer, which is trying to use these attacks to cover up the threat of freezing billions from European funds.
According to Cigániková, the reason for such actions of the current SaS leadership is pure pragmatism and the pursuit of voter percentages. He claims that the new strategy under the baton of Branislav Gröhling and Štefan Hamran consists in trying to drain votes from Progressive Slovakia at any cost. According to her, this is exactly why the SaS is resisting the creation of a unified opposition bloc and is silent in the face of attacks on the chairman of the PS. Cigániková warns that the party, which was once proud of its values, today changes its positions according to the mood of the public – from participating in PRIDE marches to visiting Šaštín.
At the end of her statement, the member of parliament calls on the voters to reconsider the narrative that SaS “cleansed itself” with her departure and the departure of Richard Sulík. She argues that she and Sulík have never reduced themselves to anonymous bullying of their partners. She decided to end her silence precisely because she could no longer accept the way the new leadership was destroying the years of work of the party’s founders in favor of spineless political marketing. With this statement, the public is faced with the question of whether the “new story” of SaS is really about a revival or just about the loss of moral inhibitions.
