Anti-Graft Eco-Activist Set to Be First Slovak Woman President

(Bloomberg) -- An activist lawyer who advocates for gay rights and closer ties with the European Union is poised to become Slovakia’s first woman president, a poll showed, making the country an outlier in a region where euroskeptic nationalists have increased their influence.

Zuzana Caputova would get 60.5 percent of votes in a March 30 presidential runoff, eclipsing Maros Sefcovic, a vice president at the EU’s executive commission, who would get 39.5 percent, according to the survey by the AKO sro pollster on Thursday. Caputova won more than twice as many votes as Sefcovic in the March 16 first round.

Caputova has ridden a wave of voter anger over corrupt ties between business and government to leap from an also-ran political neophyte to election frontrunner in only a few months. Her ascendancy strikes a contrast with a surge of nationalism in eastern Europe, where governments in Hungary, Poland and Romania have clashed with the EU over democratic standards. Slovakia’s two leading anti-establishment candidates, who campaigned on anti-migrant and pro-Russian platforms, got about a quarter of vote combined.

“Anti-establishment voters are the key, and they don’t have anybody to vote for,” said Vaclav Hrich, managing director of AKO. “From their perspective, they would need to vote for the lesser evil, and most of them will simply stay home. The ratio of votes for Caputova and Sefcovic will be very similar to the first round.”

The divorced mother of two catapulted to national recognition when she led a fight against a planned illegal landfill in the western Slovak town of Pezinok, the heart of the country’s wine-producing region.

Her campaign message to “fight evil together” resonated with Slovaks frustrated by perceived corruption under the government of former Premier Robert Fico. He was forced out last year after the murder of an investigative journalists triggered the biggest street protests since the fall of the Iron Curtain.

Sefcovic is Slovakia’s most visible figure in the EU, which enjoys wide support from the nation’s 5.4 million population. However, he is the candidate of the ruling Smer party, which is still headed by Fico, an association that may turn off many voters.

Sefcovic has campaigned on his experience as a career diplomat and promised to fight for better care for pensioners. But he has also distanced himself from Caputova’s pro-gay message, invoking his belief in "Christian values" and pledging to work against what he calls a “super-liberal agenda.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Radoslav Tomek in Bratislava at rtomek@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Michael Winfrey

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