{"id":35861,"date":"2019-03-17T08:22:58","date_gmt":"2019-03-17T08:22:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=35861"},"modified":"2019-03-17T08:22:58","modified_gmt":"2019-03-17T08:22:58","slug":"slovakias-zuzana-caputova-wins-first-round-of-presidential-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=35861","title":{"rendered":"Slovakia’s Zuzana Caputova wins first round of presidential race"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Slovak environmental activist Zuzana Caputova took a step closer to becoming her country’s first female president after winning the first round of nationwide elections<\/a>, signaling a potential sea change for a country that has fallen victim to rampant corruption since it was established in 1993.<\/p>\n

Among the 13 candidates vying for the presidency, Caputova secured 40.56 percent of the vote on Saturday, with more than 99 percent of all districts reporting.<\/p>\n

She beat Maros Sefcovic, the European Commission vice president backed by the ruling centre-left Direction-Social Democracy (Smer-SD) party, which took the second place with 18.66 percent of the vote.<\/p>\n

The two leaders will now compete in a runoff election scheduled for March 30.<\/p>\n

The result follows an impressive campaign from Caputova, a lawyer with no public office experience who for years fought to clean up a toxic landfill.<\/p>\n

Since she announced her candidacy a year ago, she has staged a meteoric rise in the polls as the anti-corruption candidate standing up to a government that has become increasingly unpopular since the murder of journalist Jan Kuciak<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

“I see a strong call for change in this election following the tragic events last spring,” Caputova told reporters as she cast vote in her home town Pezinok. “We stand on a crossroads between the loss and renewal of public trust.”<\/p>\n

With a population of just 5.54 million and half of <\/strong>all <\/strong>eligible voters casting their ballot in the election, it became impossible for any one candidate to win outright in the first round.<\/p>\n

Slovakia<\/a>‘s election rules mandate a candidate take at least 50 percent of all eligible votes, not only among those who participated.<\/p>\n

‘Political outsider’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Caputova’s resounding first-round victory poses a potential threat to the current political establishment under Smer-SD, experts believe.<\/p>\n

Though the party is pro-EU, it has used a populist platform to strengthen political support, taking a strong stand against migration and EU decision-makers in Brussels.<\/p>\n

“The mood in Slovakia fundamentally changed following the murders of Jan Kuciak and Martina Kusnirova 13 months ago,” said Rick Zednik, an American-Slovak who established the English-language newspaper ‘Slovak Spectator’ in 1995.<\/p>\n

Found shot dead at his home near Bratislava last February, Kuciak at the time was investigating an alleged connection between Italy’s ‘Ndrangheta crime syndicate and high-ranking officials in the Slovak government.<\/p>\n

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<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Demonstrators take part in a protest rally marking the first anniversary of the murder of Kuciak and his fiancee in Bratislava [David W Cerny\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

The high-profile murders of Kuciak and his fiancee Martina\u00a0Kusnirova<\/span>, months before their wedding, sparked the largest nationwide protests in Slovakia since the Velvet Revolution in 1989.<\/p>\n

Weeks later, the then Prime Minister Robert Fico resigned from his post<\/a>, but remained the head of his party.<\/p>\n

“Caputova\u00a0stepped into this context as a political outsider. That, along with her achievements as a public defender, made her a credible alternative to the political establishment,” Zednik told Al Jazeera, adding that her ascension could be an important factor in the run-up to the next parliamentary election in 2020.<\/p>\n

‘Crying for change’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Earlier this week, Slovak prosecutors formally charged a controversial businessman with alleged ties to the mafia with the murders of the 27-year-old Kuciak and Kusnirova.<\/p>\n

While the role of the president in Slovakia is symbolic in many respects, it wields a limited but important role in policy, with veto power over any bill passed by the National Council.<\/p>\n

The president can also shape the country’s currently vulnerable judicial system, with the ability to appoint judges to the Constitutional Court as well as the judicial council.<\/p>\n

“We only have four judges [serving in the Constitutional Court] and we need nine more elected, and Slovakia is waiting for a new president to choose those judges,” said Martin Poliacik, a member of the liberal Progressive Slovakia party, of which Caputova is deputy chairman.<\/p>\n

He hopes that her success could lead to further backlash against the tide of populism that has swept much of Europe in recent years.<\/p>\n

“I think the outcome of these elections will show us how much Slovakia is crying for a change, and not only internally, but for regional civilisation,” he said.<\/p>\n

“She would give hope to those other countries as well.”<\/p>\n

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Caputova and Sefcovic (right) will\u00a0compete in a runoff election scheduled for March 30<\/span> [Radovan Stoklasa\/Reuters]<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Slovak environmental activist Zuzana Caputova took a step closer to becoming her country’s first female president after winning the first round of nationwide elections, signaling a potential sea change for a country that has fallen victim to rampant corruption since it was established in 1993. Among the 13 candidates vying for the presidency, Caputova secured…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35861","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35861","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35861"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35861\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35861"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35861"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35861"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}