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 elections in March Smer bet that a xenophobic anti-refugee campaign would preserve its majority. Instead it lost 41% of its seats.

Smer now governs as part of a three-party coalition. In the spring, Mr Fico had double bypass surgery. His heir apparent, Robert Kalinak, the interior minister (nicknamed “the Handsome Fixer”), has been hurt by bribery allegations, and Mr Lajcak, who recently was a candidate for UN Secretary-General, has been tainted by this latest incident. (Both Mr Kalinak and Mr Lajcak deny wrongdoing.)

Mr Fico calls Ms Hlavkova’s charges “a targeted attack on the Slovak presidency” of the council. Though nominally leftist, Smer is drifting right to hold on to its socially conservative voters. One of its coalition partners, the nationalist Slovak National Party, has grown more popular since the elections. Further to the right, the People’s Party Our Slovakia openly defends the Nazi collaborationist regime that governed the country during the second world war. It won 8% of the vote in March under the slogan “With courage, against the system”.

Having been in power so long, Smer can hardly claim to be against the system. Instead Mr Fico attacks the independent press and whistleblowers like Ms Hlavkova: “a new political culture where a young person spoke out”, says Beata Balogova, editor-in-chief of Sme, a liberal daily. They have angered Mr Fico not by selling their honour, but by refusing to.