Is a U.S. billboard campaign a sign of interference in upcoming Slovak parliamentary elections? No, that's not true: The six U.S.-sponsored billboards show such slogans as "you will eat the society you cook" and the embassy says they are designed to promote democracy, not a particular political party in parliamentary elections.
The claim appeared in a video that is no longer available, published on TikTok on June 6, 2023, with a caption (translated from Slovak to English by Lead Stories staff) reading:
The Americans are interfering in the elections in Slovakia.
The author says:
This is not the interference in the internal affairs of other countries? Where is the diplomatic note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs?
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Tue Jul 18 15:07:00 2023 UTC)
The U.S. Embassy in Bratislava sponsored six billboards placed around the country in June 2023 for parliamentary elections scheduled on September 30, 2023.
The billboard slogan read: "You'll eat the society you cook."
U.S. Embassy spokeswoman Tara Hall told Slovak news portal Aktuality.sk that the sole purpose of the billboards is to promote society's responsibility to democratic principles, saying:
This campaign is designed to emphasize that democracy only gives us what we put into it. We are not advocating for any political party or institution, we are simply promoting democracy itself.
