In Slovakia, voters went to the polls on Saturday to choose a new president, selecting between pro-Western opposition candidate Ivan Korčok and Fico’s close ally Peter Pellegrini.
Polling stations closed at 10 p.m. local time. Initial projections are expected shortly, with official results coming out overnight.
Earlier, Korčok won the first round of voting last month with 42.5 per cent of the vote, while Pellegrini came second with 37 per cent. The two met in a decisive second round as neither had the minimum 50 per cent at that point.
Korčok, 60, served as Slovakia’s foreign minister from 2020-2022 and worked as the country’s envoy to NATO and the European Union. Korčok supports Slovakia’s membership of the EU and NATO. He stated:
I want to be at the beginning of a process which would mean improvement in the life of our people, and definitely make clear where Slovakia belongs.
In the meantime, Pellegrini, 48, is a close ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico. He is currently speaker of parliament, and his victory would consolidate Fico’s power by giving him and his associates control of strategic posts. Despite, he stressed:
This is not about the future direction of foreign policy, I am also a guarantee, like the other candidate, that we will continue to be a strong member of the EU and NATO.
President Zuzana Čaputová, a human rights lawyer who is not running for a second term, criticised the military rhetoric in a televised address on Wednesday. However, she said the following about the two candidates:
“I have had the opportunity to get to know both presidential candidates during my five years in office and I can say with clear conscience that neither Peter Pellegrini nor Ivan Korčok will drag us into any war and will not send any of our soldiers to Ukraine.”
While Slovak presidents do not have much executive power, they can veto laws or challenge them in the constitutional court and also appoint constitutional court judges who could play an important role in the political battle over the fate of Fico’s reforms.
