Nothing, of course, was done with the papers I gave him.
Determined that the story be told but unable to get it past my cautious editors, I decided to write a book about it. Before the book could be published, however, the file was released on the internet a few months ahead of Slovakia’s March 2012 parliamentary election.
The public response was at first tentative — and then dark, aggrieved, sullen. Three demonstrations were held on Bratislava’s main square, attracting several thousand spectators on freezing February evenings carrying banners and whistles. I spoke at the protests because I’d been reporting the story for years and could vouch for the file’s authenticity. But as I approached the podium, I noticed many of the “demonstrators” were actually shifty-eyed youths in bomber jackets, some holding cobblestones which they proceeded to hurl, later in the evening, at the parliament and government buildings.
Then-Prime Minister Iveta Radičová, a former sociology professor and a good egg, summoned me to her office on the eve of the third demonstration to scold me for the crowd’s behavior. “What do I have to do with Gorilla?” she demanded to know with some asperity, as police in body armor surrounded the building to protect it. “They attached a hangman’s noose to my front gate. Who put them up to this?”
Well, since you ask: Your hypocritical pro-West political allies, Dzurinda and Mikloš, who wagged censorious fingers under so many Slovak noses that when Gorilla surfaced in 2012, voters quit the liberal bandwagon en masse.
Due to the scandal, Dzurinda’s party ended up losing half its parliamentarians and tumbled to 6 percent support in the March 2012 vote. Former communist Fico, meanwhile, was returned with an absolute majority of 83 seats in the 150-member parliament for the first time in free Slovakia’s short history.
