Slovak president election: Pro-EU diplomat defeats coalition stalwart in first round

“I ought to say truthfully that I want to succeed in out extra to voters who supported the federal government events,” Korčok mentioned from his Bratislava election headquarters because the early rely was launched. “It’s clear that they’re not glad with how this authorities is ruling, the place it’s taking Slovakia.”

Pellegrini has served as speaker of parliament since final September’s common election, by which his Hlas (Voice) celebration positioned third behind the front-running Smer (Path) of Prime Minister Robert Fico. Together with nationalist junior accomplice SNS, their authorities has moved to finish navy assist for Ukraine and to chop sentencing tips and statutes of limitation for corruption offenses.

Pellegrini beforehand served as Slovak prime minister in 2018 after Fico was pressured from workplace amid a scandal over the murders that 12 months of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and his fiancée, Martina Kušnírová.

“Let’s get pleasure from this expertise,” Pellegrini mentioned because the polls closed on Saturday. The speaker, who solely agreed to a single debate with Korčok earlier than the primary spherical, promised to carry “a number of duels, correctly” together with his opponent earlier than the second spherical, and “to not succumb” to an aggressive marketing campaign model.

The nation’s 1993 Structure offers its president largely ceremonial powers, together with signing payments into regulation (the parliament in Bratislava can override a presidential veto by passing payments a second time), approving nominations for cupboard minister and head of the nation’s SIS intelligence service, and issuing amnesties.

Throughout the nation’s three a long time of independence, nonetheless, the facility of the presidency has usually been rooted in its mushy energy as a bulwark in opposition to democratic backsliding. Inaugural President Michal Kováč, for instance, turned a rallying level for resistance to thuggish Nineteen Nineties PM Vladimír Mečiar, whose safety forces kidnapped Kováč’s son and spirited him to Austria within the trunk of a automobile to face worldwide fraud prices (later dropped).