IN FEBRUARY Zuzana Hlavkova, then an employee at Slovakia’s foreign ministry, came to believe that inflated contracts tied to the country’s presidency of the European Council were being awarded to firms allied with the governing Smer party. The 26-year-old Ms Hlavkova did something unusual: she reported it to her bosses, including the foreign minister, Miroslav Lajcak. When nothing happened, she quit her job and took her evidence to the local branch of Transparency International, a watchdog, and at the end of November they went public. Local media picked up the allegations, forcing the prime minister, Robert Fico, to respond. In a press conference on November 23rd he called the reporters “dirty, anti-Slovak prostitutes”.
The pugnacious Mr Fico, who has been in power for nine of the past eleven years, has a habit of insulting journalists. In August he compared one to a “toilet spider”. But if he seems nervous, one reason may be his sliding popularity. In 2014 he tried to move from prime minister to president, but lost in a landslide to Andrej Kiska, an entrepreneur. In parliamentary…