Zuzana Čaputová is the first woman to be elected president of Slovakia. (source: Sme - Jozef Jakubčo)
Slovakia has elected its first female president, an act unprecedented across the whole Visegrad region. Let us mention this historic aspect of Zuzana Čaputová’s victory before it is drowned in other interpretations of her victory.
As recently as two months ago, many, including the author of this piece, doubted that Slovakia would be able to show such a progressive attitude towards women in politics. Today, Slovakia has a woman president-elect. A woman will speak to the nation from the top constitutional post for the next five years, telling the girls of Slovakia with her every appearance in public that a high-level state office is a place for a woman after all.
EU flag in the background
But the fact that she is a woman is not the only reason that Čaputová will stand out among the quartet of heads of state during presidential-level meetings of the Visegrad Group. She will be the only one to represent a liberal attitude and a clear rejection of the populism that has become a trademark of this region in the past few years. The EU flag that someone spread in the background when she gave her first address as president-elect on the midnight of March 30 says a lot about what we can expect of the next president when it comes to foreign policy.
