April 7, 2024·News·Editorial·ČTK
Pellegrini won the election. (Photo: Profimedia)
Slovak Parliament Speaker Peter Pellegrini, who is an ally of Prime Minister Robert Fico, is leading in the decisive second round of the Slovak presidential election with almost 57 percent of the votes ahead of diplomat Ivan Korčok with 43 percent. Votes from four fifths of the polling stations are counted. In the first round of the presidential election held two weeks ago, Korčok, supported by the opposition, swept the leadership to his side at about this stage of the vote count.
“Peter Pellegrini won the election. Ivan Korčok can no longer overtake him,” the Sme newspaper wrote on its website. The next Slovak president will be Pellegrini, he wrote in the headline.
In Pellegrini’s election staff at the Aušpic restaurant in Bratislava, cheers and applause accompanied the still incomplete results. “Pelle to the castle, Pelle to the castle!” the candidate’s colleagues chanted before singing the Slovak national anthem. The mandate of the current president Zuzana Čaputová ends in mid-June.
Pellegrini thanked Fico for his support and pledged loyalty to the government
The nation has decided who it wants as president, Pellegrini said. He sees his election as consolidating the government premiere Roberta Fica and the governing coalition. The government need not worry that the Presidential Palace will become a center that will harm the government, declared the next head of state, who appeared before journalists in the company of Prime Minister Fico and the former president Ivan Gašparovič.
“I will protect and defend the interests of the Slovak Republic. I will be the president who will support the government in its efforts to improve the lives of people in Slovakia. I will do everything to ensure that Slovakia always remains on the side of peace and not on the side of war, whether someone likes it or not, whoever criticizes me for it,” he said in an apparent allusion to the reserved attitude of the governing coalition to support Ukraine, which has been resisting Russian aggression for more than two years.
In the campaign, Pellegrini’s camp referred to his main opponent, the pro-Western liberal Ivan Korčok, who managed to defeat the favored candidate of the government camp in the first round, as “war candidate” or outright as a warmonger. Pellegrini promised to be the president of all citizens, regardless of whether they voted for him or not. “I will always be on the side of the Slovak Republic. SR and her interests will come first for me,” he emphasized.
According to the almost complete results, Pellegrini won over 53 percent of the vote (about 1.4 million), his opponent, career diplomat Ivan Korčok, supported by the opposition, almost 47 percent (about 1.23 million). Fico congratulated his coalition partner and reminded that he himself ran unsuccessfully for the presidency.