Who will be Slovakia’s President is to be decided on March 29th as none of the 14 people whose names were on the ballot on Saturday managed to get at least half of all votes. Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico, supported by the social-democrats, won the first round with 28% of the vote, much less than opinion polls expected him to collect.
„In fact this can be regarded as a referendum about my party Smer, I have won it even if the result did not meet our expectations. But this is because voter turn-out was lower than anticipated. I expect the run-off to be very interesting,“ Fico said pointing to the voter turnout of 43.4%.
His opponent will be the business man and philanthropist , Andrej Kiska, an independnet candidate with no previous political experience but who managed to get the support of 24% of the electorate.
„I'm going to the second round with a genuine determination to fight. The anti-campaign has already begun, I expected traditional politicians to resort to dirty tricks to create a negative image of me. I am prepared to file a criminal complaint against Fico over his statements that I become rich through usury,“ said Kiska.
He praised the candidate on the third place, an MP and constitutional expert Radoslav Prochazka for his "fantastic election result". A former member of the Christian Democratic Movement, Prochazka missed a place in the run-off by a whisker with 21.2% of the vote. He was both a bit disappointed and honoured at the same time pointing to the fact that the figure is about three times higher than what opinion polls gave him.
Actor and former Culture Minister Milan Kňažko, an independent candidate, came fourth with 12.9% of the vote. The Hungarian ethnics living in Slovakia might have liked to see their man Gyula Bardos in the Presidential palace but he received only 5.1% of the vote, finishing fifth.
Despite the ugly weather on Saturday, voters in the Bratislava region were the most disciplined with 50.3% of them casting their ballots, while the least interested in politics seemed to have been those in the Košice region where only 37.5% of voters expressed their choice for the future President.
