Zuzana Caputova leaves, Peter Pellegrini arrives. (source: TASR)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. Zuzana Čaputová’s presidency ends, and Peter Pellegrini’s begins. The government’s answer to the attempt on Fico’s life: tighter security around politicians and lifetime pensions for prime ministers – but curiously, only Fico qualifies.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
A changing of the guard
Slovakia exchanged presidents on Saturday at high noon, in line with constitutional requirements and unwritten tradition. In a way, this changing of the guard is more significant than the one five years ago.
Zuzana Čaputová, a human rights lawyer with a career in the non-governmental sector was briefly a member of Progressive Slovakia (PS) – then an extra-parliamentary party, now the largest opposition party – before being elected president in a campaign propelled by calls for change after three consecutive Smer-led administrations.
She has now vacated the Presidential Palace in Bratislava in favour of Peter Pellegrini, a professional politician who, by coincidence, was prime minister at the time Čaputová won the presidency in 2019. After serving at Fico’s right hand for almost two decades in the Smer party, Pellegrini broke away to form his own party, Hlas, in 2020 – only to join forces with Smer again to form the coalition that has ruled the country since last October. As of Saturday, he is the first person in Slovakia’s post-1993 history to have held all three top constitutional posts.
Čaputová’s departure also marks the end of Slovakia’s first female presidency. She will be replaced by someone who seems rather more at home with the pomp and ceremony of the office, a man who will not need to put up with comments about his outfit or hairstyle. He will also be spared the misogynistic attacks by politicians from the ruling coalition that Čaputová admits were among the reasons she did not seek re-election.
