Slovaks Set to Pick First Woman President in Rebuke to Populism
Slovaks Set to Pick First Woman President in Rebuke to Populism
(Bloomberg) -- Slovaks are voting in a presidential runoff that will probably lift a liberal pro-European Union lawyer to the nation’s highest office in a rebuke of the populism that’s sweeping parts of the bloc’s ex-communist wing.
Zuzana Caputova, a 45-year-old divorced mother of two, captured a strong lead in support before the ballot. Poised to become Slovakia’s first woman president, she swept up more than twice as many votes in the March 16 first round than her opponent Maros Sefcovic, a top EU Commission official who’s running for the ruling Smer party. Polls opened Saturday at 7 a.m. and will close at 10 pm.
The driving issue in the election is public anger sparked by last year’s double murder of an investigate reporter, who wrote about high-level graft, and his fiancee. The ensuring outrage triggered the largest protests since the fall of the Iron Curtain and forced three-time Premier Robert Fico to resign. It has also lifted Caputova, who campaigned under the slogan “let’s fight the evil together,” from relative obscurity to the heavy favorite of voters who want to punish Fico’s ruling Smer party.
“Caputova’s position outside the establishment and her untainted agenda is appealing to citizens across the political spectrum,” said Otilia Dhand, an analyst at Teneo Intelligence in Brussels. “People feel that their vote can finally bring a change.”
Slovakia has long been perceived as one of the least problematic countries in the EU’s eastern wing, where surging nationalism in neighbors Poland and Hungary has fueled clashes with the bloc’s leadership over their drift away from democratic and multi-cultural values. The Czechs last year gave a second term to President Milos Zeman, known for his pro-Russian views.
But the murders tore asunder the image of stability under Smer, which has ridden a wave of accelerating economic growth to rule unchallenged for most of this decade.
Caputova, whose previous claim to fame was her role fighting a businessman who’s been charged with ordering the double murder from building an illegal landfill, shot to prominence in campaign debates by stressing the need to provide justice to all Slovaks. She’s also a vocal advocate of gay rights, a controversial topic in a predominantly Catholic region.
By contrast, Sefcovic’s popularity has suffered because of his ties with Smer. While both contenders support Slovakia’s pro-western orientation, he has stressed his devotion to traditional Christian values in a last-minute push to win over the backers of populist and right-wing candidates who exited in the first round.
It hasn’t helped. The only opinion survey released after the first round, by the AKO sro pollster, showed Caputova winning the runoff with more than 60 percent.
"I don’t fully agree with Caputova, but I will vote for her," said Attila Csorgo, 42, who works as a salesman in Norway and timed a trip back to his hometown, Bratislava, to vote. "I don’t trust Sefcovic. He’s Smer, and Smer has done a lot of harm to this country."
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, Andrew Langley
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.