Peter Pellegrini on election night (source: Sme - Marko Erd)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia, which this week we are sending out one day early. Peter Pellegrini has won the presidential election. Here is how it came about and what it means for the president-elect, his party, and his competitor in the run-off, Ivan Korčok.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
Pellegrini is the president-elect
The Fico-led ruling coalition will take control of the presidency come June. That is the main outcome of the presidential election run-off in Slovakia, which Peter Pellegrini won on Saturday, April 6, with 53.1 percent of the vote. His opponent, Ivan Korčok, received 46.9 percent. Pellegrini will take over the presidency from Zuzana Čaputová, the incumbent, in June.
Pellegrini won the Presidential Palace for the ruling coalition, but he also won a way out of the Robert Fico-led ruling coalition for himself. This time last year, and in the months that preceded the September parliamentary election, he had been eyeing the prime-ministerial chair – by far the most powerful in Slovakia’s constitutional set-up. That did not work out, and he opted to join the coalition under his political patriarch Robert Fico – despite the fact that the two men had not seen eye to eye since Pellegrini deserted Fico’s Smer party to establish Hlas in 2020. Fico once labelled Pellegrini a “traitor”, but on election night the two men hugged in front of the cameras as they celebrated the latter’s election win.
Pellegrini’s presidency was part of a larger scheme not of his own design. Just a few months before he announced his candidacy, ahead of the September election, he was still saying that he felt young, full of energy and ready for an executive post. That was when he still believed had a shot at the premiership. Then came Hlas’s disappointing third place in the September parliamentary election, the return of Fico – and with it a marked change of heart in Camp Pellegrini.
