(CNN)When Slovakia’s newly elected President Zuzana Caputova — the country’s first ever female head of state — delivered her acceptance speech on Saturday she immediately set herself apart from the wave of populist parties sweeping Europe.
The 45-year-old liberal lawyer thanked voters not just in Slovak — but in Hungarian, Czech, Roma and Ruthenian — in a show of unity with the nation’s minority groups and rejection of the nationalist rhetoric popular in some neighboring countries.
“I am happy not just for the result but mainly that it is possible not to succumb to populism, to tell the truth, to raise interest without aggressive vocabulary,” she told supporters, Reuters reported.
