The pro-Russian social democrat Peter Pellegrini, who had the support of the outgoing government, won this Saturday in the presidential elections in Slovakia with 53.5% of the votes, when 99% of the electoral colleges have already been counted. His opponent, the pro-European Ivan Korkoc, has acknowledged his defeat in the second round after winning the first two weeks ago with his message of exercising control of the Executive from the position of head of State.
For his part, Pellegrini has defended during the campaign the need to negotiate with Russia the end of the war started by its invasion of Ukraine, a position maintained by the Government that, since coming to power in the autumn, stopped the important military aid that the country had been lending to kyiv.
Participation was 60%, 18 points more than in 2019, confirming analysts’ forecasts that a high turnout at the polls would favor Pellegrini, who has been able to mobilize his voters and attract those of the ultranationalist Štefan Harabin, his government partner, who came third.
The social democratic candidate has won in seven of the country’s eight regions, while his rival, supported by the liberal and European opposition, has only been first in Bratislava, the capital. Korcok focused his campaign on defending military support for Ukraine and running as a counterweight to the Executive led by left-wing populist Robert Fico, whom he accuses of violating the rule of law with measures such as eliminating the anti-corruption Prosecutor’s Office or his attacks on the media. Communication. The president-elect, for his part, presented his rival as a supporter of war and accused him of wanting to send Slovak troops to fight in Ukraine.
Pellegrini’s party, Hlas, is a split from Fico’s Smer, the veteran politician with whom he was a close collaborator and with whom he trained politically. Pellegrini succeeded Fico as prime minister when he resigned in the face of popular protests and unrest over the murder of Ján Kuciak, a journalist who investigated links between organized crime and political power.
After the elections last September, Hlas and Smer formed a government with the ultranationalist SNS, which is why the two parties were suspended from the group of European social democrats. Since 2018, Fico has been assuming anti-immigration and Eurosceptic positions that bring him closer to the Hungarian Prime Minister, the ultranationalist Viktor Orbán.
