Fico, Róbert [key], 1964–, Slovak political leader. A member of the Communist party (1987–90), its successor, the Party of the Democratic Left (1990–99), and then the center-left Direction–Social Democracy (Smer; 1999–), Fico was first elected to parliament in 1992. He served as prime minister of a coalition government with centrist and nationalist parties (2006–10), of the first one-party government (2012–16) since the breakup of Czechoslovakia, and once again of a coalition government (2016–18). Public outcry over the murder of an investigative journalist in 2018 forced Fico, whose governments had been tainted by corruption scandals, to resign as prime minister. He ran for president in 2014, but lost to independent Andrej Kiska in a runoff.
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