Commenting on the result of the US presidential election, Slovak Foreign Minister Miroslav Lajčák has said that American voters have made their decision. "They elected the may they want to see at the head of their country and Slovakia respects their choice. We congratulate the winner and we are ready to work with him. But we wonder what kind of president Donald Trump will make" Lajčák noted.
"The question we are asking ourselves is what the distance between Donald Trump the candidate and Donald Trump the president will be. Ideas and election promises are one thing, but practical constraints by which any statesman, including the US president, is bound, are quite another," he said.
Lajčák noted he believes that there is no need to overdramatize and inflate some of the things Trump said during the campaign, because according to him it is common during campaigns to hear things that are simply not part of what is known as Realpolitik.
"One thing is clear. These elections have confirmed that in democratic countries and societies there is a genuine mounting frustration of citizens and voter dissatisfaction with what we consider to be standard," the head of Slovak diplomacy said. According to him, this fact cannot be ignored. „People feel alienated from politics. They feel that politicians do not solve their problems and that they deal with matters that ordinary citizens do not understand." Lajčák also mentioned a growing gap between the rich and poor as another reason.
"President Trump is not a president of continuity in American domestic and foreign policy" Lajčák underscored. "US voters have great expectations of him based on what he spoke about during the campaign. The world, America's partners, including Europe have expectations of the President of the United States, too". Referring to NATO, Donald Trump looks at policy issues as an entrepreneur, the Slovak Foreign Minister said. "When he talks about relations with NATO allies and about his philosophy, he asks what they are prepared to do for this relationship. It would be naive to think that we could piggyback on the United States," Lajčák emphasised.
He said he was convinced that Trump's victory will have an impact on the political scene in the EU.
