Slovak prime minister Robert Fico has asked U.S. billionaire Elon Musk, the head of the Trump Administration’s Department of Government Efficiency to provide information on how the main U.S. aid agency’s (USAID) funds were used to “deform the political system” in Slovakia to “favour certain political parties.”
Left-wing nationalist Fico and his cabinet have been facing a wave of protests in recent weeks, described by the PM as the liberal Europhile opposition’s attempt to oust his democratically elected government with the help of foreign-funded NGOs.
In a letter to Musk, the Slovak PM stated that “it is indisputable that financial resources from USAID were used in Slovakia for political purposes.”
It is clear even from incomplete public sources that USAID has supported these entities with subsidies amounting to several million dollars over a relatively short period.
Fico asked Musk to provide information on grants to “non-governmental organisations, media and individual journalists active on the territory of the Slovak Republic” so as to “distinguish between useful and beneficial projects and blatant interference in Slovakia’s internal affairs.”
His letter comes after the new, Donald Trump-led U.S. Administration announced it would dismantle USAID. The government agency’s primary responsibility is to manage foreign aid programs, but it has been exposed as spreading globalist progressivism abroad and working to undermine elected governments not favoured by Washington.
The new administration has shut down almost all funding for the agency. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. government will continue providing foreign aid, “but it is going to be foreign aid that makes sense and is aligned with our national interest.”
Fico’s government has been in the crosshairs of EU’s liberal elites for espousing a sovereignist, EU-critical foreign policy, a tough anti-immigration stance, and for rejecting woke ideologies.
The opposition has been organising protests against the government since Fico’s visit to Moscow in December, accusing the PM of shifting the country’s foreign policy towards Russia. Fico maintains, however, that he wishes to have a pragmatic relationship with all global powers, and that his foreign policy is still determined by EU and NATO membership.
The opposition is trying to capitalise on the fact that internal disputes within the two junior partners of Fico’s three-party coalition have weakened the government, and the PM is fervently trying to keep his cabinet together to avoid early elections.
Opinion polls do not suggest huge dissatisfaction with the government, as support for the ruling and opposition parties has hardly changed since the last elections.
Fico’s letter followed comments by his ally and neighbour Prime Minister Viktor Orbán of Hungary, who said last week he would take steps to ensure all aid funding coming from the United States to NGOs and media critical of the government is revealed, saying the time had come to “eliminate these foreign networks.”
