Slovakia's future president warns of 'threat to democracy'

Slovakia's president-elect Peter Pellegrini has condemned the attack on Prime Minister Robert Fico as an "unprecedented threat to Slovak democracy."

"If we express political opinions with guns in the public squares, and not in the polling stations, we are jeopardizing everything we have built together in the 31 years of Slovak independence," the Social Democrat politician warned on Wednesday.

Pellegrini cancelled a trip abroad. He is considered a close ally of Fico, even though he founded his own party, Hlas, four years ago as a splinter from Fico's left-wing populist Smer.

He won the presidential election in April and will succeed the outgoing liberal president Zuzana Čaputová in June. The Slovak Republic gained independence in 1993 with the division of Czechoslovakia.