Former foreign minister Ivan Korčok and former prime minister Peter Pellegrini, the coalition partner of current PM Robert Fico, will face off in the first round of Slovakia’s presidential election on Saturday, Euractiv informs.
After the current president Zuzana Čaputová decided not to run for a second term, only Hlas party leader Pellegrini and senior diplomat Korčok, who represented the country in the EU between 2009 and 2015, have a real chance of success among the nine candidates, experts suggest. A political analyst Radoslav Štefančík stated:
Ivan Korčok can win. The elections in 2014 and 2019 showed that the part of society with pro-Western values is still very strong in Slovakia.
The latest opinion polls released on Tuesday show an equality between the candidates, with Pellegrini most likely to win.
Korčok’s election campaign is based on the premise that the ruling coalition should not occupy all decision-making positions in the country and presents his candidacy as a “counterbalance” to the actions of the current government. Pellegrini criticised his counterbalance concept, arguing that it was “absolutely mistaken” and “only promised a conflict between the highest constitutional bodies of Slovakia.”
Political analyst Grigorij Mesežnikov noted:
“If Korčok is elected, he will most likely continue in the political legacy of Andrej Kiska and Zuzana Čaputová. If Pellegrini wins, everything we have been experiencing during these last five months of the current government will continue.”
