By Radovan Stoklasa and Jan Lopatka
BRATISLAVA (Reuters) – Slovakia’s nationalist left-wing government candidate Peter Pellegrini was on track to win the country’s presidential election, results from most electoral districts and projections showed on Saturday.
A victory for Pellegrini would be a boost for Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has shifted the country’s foreign policy toward more pro-Russian views and initiated criminal law and media reforms that have raised concerns about the weakening of the rule of law.
Pellegrini, supported by the ruling coalition of the nationalist left, won 56.7% of the vote, against 43.3% for the pro-Western opposition candidate Ivan Korcok, according to the results of 80.1% of electoral districts .
Korcok could still win more votes in large urban districts that report last, but forecasting models from two Slovak media outlets showed he is unlikely to close the gap.
Slovak presidents don’t have much executive power, but they can veto laws or challenge them in the Constitutional Court. They appoint Constitutional Court judges, who could become important in the political conflict over the fate of Fico’s reforms, which would dramatically ease punishments for corruption.
Pellegrini, 48, has tried to paint Korcok as a warmonger for his support for arming Ukraine and suggested he might bring Slovak troops to war, which Korcok denies.
Pellegrini, considered more moderate than Fico, said his election would not mean a rush to change foreign policy.
“This is not about the future direction of foreign policy, I am also a guarantee, like the other candidate, that we will continue to be a strong member of the EU and NATO,” he said after voting in Rovinka, on the outskirts of capital.
The independent Korcok, 60, was Slovakia’s envoy to the EU and later ambassador to the United States, before taking over the foreign affairs portfolio in centre-right governments in 2021-2022.
At the time, Slovakia was a staunch ally of Ukraine, providing it with air defense and fighter jets. Fico’s cabinet cut off official supplies after taking power.
Pellegrini, now speaker of parliament, was a longtime ally of Fico, who chose him as prime minister after Fico was forced to resign amid public protests against corruption following the murder of an investigative journalist in 2018.
He later split from Fico to found his own party, Hlas (Voice), more centrist and liberal than Fico’s left-populist SMER-SSD, but formed a government with Fico and the nationalist SNS last October.