Peter Pellegrini (source: Sme - Marko Erd)
Welcome to your weekly commentary and overview of news from Slovakia. The country will elect its next president this Saturday. Two decades in NATO. Government delays its RTVS bill.
If you have a suggestion on how to make this overview better, let me know at michaela.terenzani@spectator.sk.
In the run-up to the presidential run-off
Two days of campaigning, two televised debates and one vote from now, the citizens of Slovakia will know the identity of their next president.
A final duel between Peter Pellegrini and Ivan Korčok was long expected, but it’s now more Korčok vs. Pellegrini – and that has somewhat changed the dynamics of the campaign. After Korčok won the first round, the Pellegrini campaign seems to have realised that smiling, avoiding confrontation and proclaiming their candidate’s love for “peace” may not suffice to carry their candidate into the Presidential Palace after all.
The last week, which was truncated by the Easter holidays, brought a more confrontational tone into the campaign, in contrast to the somewhat tepid offering before the election’s first round. The ruling coalition has been accusing Korčok of planning to bring down their government, of wanting to give up Slovakia’s right of veto in the European Council, and even of plotting to “drag Slovakia into war”. Politicians from Pellegrini’s Hlas party have alleged that Korčok would send Slovak troops to Ukraine, to which Korčok has responded, accurately, that such a decision is not even within the competence of the president. Prime Minister Robert Fico, who has played a supporting role in the Pellegrini campaign, has taken to promoting an absurd narrative about Korčok, spread initially in the disinformation media, that links him to the 1999 NATO bombing of Belgrade.
