Zuzana Čaputová became the fifth Slovak president. (source: Michal Svítok, TASR)
Zuzana Čaputová is the first woman to be elected president in both Slovakia and the entire region of the Visegrad Group.
Čaputová won the runoff round of the presidential election with more than 58.2 percent of the vote, compared to Šefčovič's 41.8 percent (after more than 94 percent of the votes have been counted). The election turnout is expected to be record low for the presidential election.
"Thank you for standing by me, I promise I will stand by you," Čaputová said in her first speech as president-elect at midnight, after her competitor Maroš Šefčovič congratulated her on her victory over the phone.
She said that she will also aspire to win the trust of the people who have not given her their trust yet.
Desire for fairness
Zuzana Čaputová said that she is pleased not just with her victory but also because she achieved it in a way that many have doubted: without aggressiveness or smear campaigns.
"Perhaps we thought that justice and fairness in politics is just an intellectual topic, but today we see that it is the desire of many people," Čaputová said. Justice and fairness have been the leading topics of her campaign. Observers believe they have resonated among society, particularly after the events of 2018 in Slovakia, marked by the murder of a journalist and his fiancée and the political turmoil that followed.
