Peter Pellegrini of Slovakia’s nationalist-left ruling coalition beat pro-Western opposition candidate Ivan Korcok by 53.1% to 46.9% in the presidential election on Saturday, 6 April. Turnout was 61.14%, the highest for a presidential election in Slovakia since 1999.
Pellegrini, 48, is House speaker and an ally
Incoming Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico did not waste time to state his positions on the war in Ukraine when he spoke to members of the press in Brussels on Thursday, 26 October.
“The conflict in Ukraine is not our affair, and we are not involved in it,” the Slovak
Left-wing nationalist populist party Slovak Social Democracy (SMER-SD) is predicted to secure the most votes at the general election on Saturday, 30 September.
The party is led by former Prime Minister Robert Fico, whose last government fell in 2018, a watershed year for Slovak politics, after the murder of journalist