Security analyst on alleged coup preparations: if true, authorities should have already made arrests and there should have been a state of emergency

According to government officials and the President, an organised group is operating in Slovakia, carrying out influence activities and trying to stage a revolution. The Slovak Information Service, which is currently monitoring the individuals, should have found out and there is no need to declare a state of emergency for the time being. Prime Minister Robert Fico added that these are the same people "who prepared coups in Ukraine and Georgia".

We do not know more than the public, but several questions are raised. What would a state of emergency look like? Why has the President not declared it? And why has no one been arrested yet? On these and other topics, ta3 editor Martin Linhart spoke with security analyst Radovan Bránik.

The police should have acted a long time ago

"The situation has developed very suddenly from that secret meeting and in parliament to this morning (23 January). There was a completely unquestionable impression given by the prime minister, the interior minister, etc., that there were preparations, that there was a group operating in Slovakia to help bring down the government," Bránik describes the developments so far. He also recalls that Fico claimed that 90% of all the facts are not yet known to the public.

However, the analyst sees a logical hole in the government's version. "If these facts were indeed true, then during the course of today, after the Security Council, the President would have had to declare a state of emergency under the State Security Act, and there would have been widespread arrests, indictments of persons who have acted sincerely against the Republic. Nothing of the sort happened," Bránik points out.

Such a state would entail a number of measures. "We are talking about introducing censorship, about curfews, about restrictions on the movement of people. We are even talking about various coercive measures, which we have never experienced in Slovakia, because such a state of affairs has never existed here," Bránik explained.

According to the analyst, it is striking that the president practically did not comment on the situation after the security council and left all the responsibility to the prime minister. "It means that we heard lies from several constitutional officials yesterday," Bránik stated.

"You can't be a little bit pregnant. So, either all those facts that he warned us about really came true and then we should really see something unprecedented today, or it was lies and no 90% of the information that has been classified so far exists," he added.

Prime Minister Fico also claimed that the security forces had specific names, photographs and bank accounts of those involved in the alleged plot. "If all this were true, the stage of preparation for a crime has already taken place. And it is already criminal. What do we want to wait for?" Bránik asks.

Listeners can

However, the analyst also points out that the monitoring, which was probably carried out by the SIS, is not in itself problematic.

"Justifiable monitoring follows the Slovak Information Service from the law. I, for my part, would like to warn anyone who engages publicly that they may become subject to some form of intelligence attention in a legal way, not just civilian attention. This is a normal thing," he explained.

At the same time, Bránik expressed doubts that the protests taking place in Slovakia have anything to do with the planned coup. "I say again, even just the preparation of these criminal acts, which yesterday they said really happened and were being prepared, is criminal. So there's no reason for delay there as long as they have documented such knowledge," he stressed.

"Simply, you cannot not act. So either the Prime Minister, and I have to put it this bluntly, explicitly lied, or for some reason that is not known to me at this point, law enforcement authorities have failed to exercise their powers and act," the analyst added.

The unfortunate mail of the citizens' initiative

Bránik also touched on the subject of the email, which the SIS report allegedly referred to and which was later claimed by the civic initiative Not in Our Town.

"I find it very unfortunate the way they distributed the mail that the Prime Minister and other officials were talking about yesterday. I strongly believe that at least one sentence in that email really should not have been in there at all, and several other phrasings," the analyst criticised, adding that in this way the email was made vulnerable to abuse.

Bránik also addressed the issue of the increased security measures that were announced in connection with the protests: "It is quite possible and logical to expect that these measures will be strengthened, that the police or undercover forces will monitor these events more closely and will attend to them in some way. It's standard, it's normal, it's fine." However, he also stressed that these measures should not go beyond the law and restrict the right to peaceful assembly.

Watch the full interview with analyst Bránik: