The presidential candidate who ended up third in the first round of election with 21.24 percent of the vote, Radoslav Procházka, said “I will vote for Andrej Kiska” to a press briefing in parliament March 18.
Procházka added that he must honour his pre-election pledge to support any rightist candidate who will make it to the run-off. [Andrej Kiska ended second in the vote, placing after Prime Minister Robert Fico who runs for the Smer party. The two will meet in the second round.] Procházka admitted that Fico might be the best candidate to represent Slovakia internationally, but Slovakia needs balance and a counterweight for the ruling power.
Political analysts agree that Procházka’s stance is very important as a political gesture, but that does not mean Kiska can necessarily count on all the votes that Procházka got in the first round. Procházka himself said during his press briefing that his voters proved in the first round that they had their own minds and followed their own decisions, when they voted for him despite the rather low numbers he was getting in pre-election polls.
When asked about his political future, Procházka, who currently serves as an independent MP, said he has scheduled several important meetings for the rest of the week and he will shortly inform journalists about whom he met and with what result. He repeated his previous claim that he was not going to establish a new political party as long as he is serving as an MP – but failed to specify whether he was going to leave his parliamentary seat.
(Source: The Slovak Spectator)
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
The Slovak Spectator cannot vouch for the accuracy of the information presented in its Flash News postings.
