Slovaks headed to the ballots on Saturday to elect a successor to Zuzana Caputov\u00e1, the country\u2019s first female president and a staunch backer of Slovakia\u2019s neighbour Ukraine in its fight against Russia\u2019s two-year invasion. She is not seeking a second term. Peter Pellegrini, a close ally of Slovakia\u2019s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico is considered a favourite in the race for the largely ceremonial post of president. He leads a field of nine candidates in the first round of the presidential election to become the country\u2019s sixth head of state since Slovakia gained independence in 1993 after Czechoslovakia split in two.<\/p>\n
Polls will close at 2100 GMT and results are expected Sunday. If no candidate gets a majority, which is expected, the top two finishers will go through to a runoff on April 6. Pellegrini, 48, who favours a strong role for the state, heads the left-wing Hlas (Voice) party that finished third in the September 30 parliamentary election. His party joined a ruling coalition with Fico\u2019s leftist Smer (Direction) party and the ultranationalist Slovak National Party. The new government immediately halted arms delivery to Ukraine. Former Foreign Minister Ivan Korcok, 59, a pro-Western career diplomat is his main rival.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom my point of view, I did all I could,\u201d Korcok said Saturday after casting the ballot in the town of Senec near the capital Bratislava. \u201cIt\u2019s up to the people to consider carefully what the future head of state will look like.\u201d Korcok had also served as the ambassador to the United States and Germany, and firmly supports Slovakia\u2019s European Union and NATO memberships. Most public polls expect a narrow victory for Pellegrini in the first round. A former justice minister and judge, Stefan Harabin, 66, who has openly sided with Russia in its war against Ukraine is predicted to finish third. Another former foreign minister and career diplomat, J\u00e1n Kubis, and far-right leader Marian Kotleba are among other notable candidates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Slovaks headed to the ballots on Saturday to elect a successor to Zuzana Caputov\u00e1, the country\u2019s first female president and\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":34692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[186],"tags":[991,726,11246,976,11605,11603,265,988,11604,11602],"class_list":["post-34686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-elections","tag-eu","tag-nationalism","tag-nato","tag-peter-pellegrini","tag-populism","tag-russia-ukraine-war","tag-slovakia","tag-slovakias-populist-prime-minister-robert-fico","tag-successor"],"reading_time":"2 min read","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34686","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34686"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34686\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.businessupturn.com\/usa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}