By Radovan Stoklasa and Jan Lopatka
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) – Government candidate Peter Pellegrini narrowly led Slovakia’s presidential election, a prediction model by news website dennikn.sk, based on partial results, showed on Saturday.
Pellegrini, backed by the nationalist-left ruling coalition, was tipped to take 50.4% of the vote, versus 49.6% for pro-Western opposition candidate Ivan Korcok, the model showed, using actual results from 15.1% of voting districts.
At stake is whether Prime Minister Robert Fico, who took power in October for the fourth time, will get an ally in the presidential palace or an opponent who could challenge his pro-Russian stance and plans to reform criminal law and the media, which have raised concerns over weakening the rule of law.
Actual results from 30.4% of districts showed Pellegrini leading with 62.3% versus 37.7% for Korcok, the Slovak statistical office said. Early results tend to be from small, rural districts where Pellegrini has bigger support.
Slovak presidents do not have many executive powers, but can veto laws or challenge them in the constitutional court. They nominate constitutional court judges, who may become important in political strife over the fate of Fico’s reforms, which would dramatically ease punishments for corruption.
Korcok, 60, has focused on making clear he does not want Fico and all his coalition to have executive positions in the government, and also on speaking out against an anti-western policy shift by Fico.
“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,” Korcok said after voting in Senec, 35 km (20 miles) northeast of Bratislava.
Pellegrini, 48, has tried to portray Korcok as a warmonger for his support for arming Ukraine and suggested he may take Slovak troops into the war, which Korcok denies.
Pellegrini, seen as more moderate than Fico, said his election would not mean a rush to change foreign policy.
“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,” he said after voting in Rovinka on the outskirts of the capital.
The independent Korcok was Slovakia’s envoy to the EU and later ambassador to the U.S., before taking the foreign affairs portfolio in centre-right governments in 2021-2022.
At the time, Slovakia was a staunch ally of Ukraine, providing it with air defence and fighter jets. Fico’s cabinet halted official supplies after taking power.
Pellegrini, now speaker of parliament, was a long-time ally of Fico, who picked him to be prime minister after Fico was forced to resign amid public protests against corruption following the murder of an investigative journalist in 2018.
He later split from Fico to set up his own party, Hlas (Voice), more centrist and liberal than Fico’s populist-leftist SMER-SSD, but formed a government with Fico and the nationalist SNS last October.
(Reporting by Eva Korinkova in Bratislava, Radovan Stoklasa in Senec and Jan Lopatka in Prague; Writing by Jan Lopatka in Prague; Editing by Alison Williams, Giles Elgood and Alistair Bell)
Disclaimer: This report is auto generated from the Reuters news service. ThePrint holds no responsibilty for its content.