Peter Pellegrini, the candidate of the populist governing coalition of Slovakia, was elected the country’s next head of state in the April 6 vote. He will take office in June, replacing President Zuzana Čaputová, a pro-Western liberal.
His victory entrenches the country’s recent swing towards illiberalism under Robert Fico, who returned as prime minister for a fourth time in October, and elevates the premier to a position of political near-supremacy. For neighboring Ukraine, it underlines the bleak prospect of another Kremlin-friendly administration (along with Hungary) on its western border.
Saturday’s two-candidate run-off vote produced a victory for Pellegrini, by 53.1% to 46.9%, over Ivan Korčok, an experienced diplomat and former foreign minister backed by Slovakia’s progressive and conservative Christian-democratic opposition parties. Pellegrini swept rural and regional Slovakia, winning seven of the country’s eight regions. The only exception was the capital, Bratislava, which Korčok won convincingly, as expected.
The outcome reversed Korčok’s first place in the first round on March 23, which was fought among nine candidates. The final run-off saw a significant bump in turnout — though only to 61% — with support for Pellegrini surging by almost 70%.
Particularly telling was Pellegrini’s landslide victory in the central region of Banská Bystrica – which both he and Korčok treat as home – and the fact that every electoral commune along the Ukrainian border went for Pellegrini, with some villages backing him by huge margins of up to 90%.
Korčok won most of the larger towns and cities but, in what is one of Europe’s least urban countries, that was not enough.
The result came at the end of a curiously flat campaign, given the febrile political atmosphere in preceding months.
Fico’s recent radical policy changes, backed enthusiastically by Pellegrini’s Hlas (Voice) party, have sparked opposition street demonstrations attracting tens of thousands of people in cities across Slovakia since late last year. In particular, an attempt by the Fico government to abolish a special prosecution unit focused on high-level corruption and to radically amend the penal code so as reduce penalties for white-collar crime – not uncoincidentally, numerous politicians, businessmen and officials close to Fico’s Smer party, including Fico himself, have been caught up in fraud and judicial corruption investigations in recent years – have generated public outrage.
The Pellegrini campaign intuited correctly that the outrage was not as widespread as the demonstrations suggested, and could be spun to provoke a backlash. Slovakia’s president, as head of state, has a largely symbolic role with few executive powers, and Pellegrini ran on a campaign that stressed the need to restore “calm” in Slovakia and support “peace” — in other words, Ukraine’s defeat — in the war. (Fico has ended bilateral military aid to Ukraine, but has been happy to allow Slovak arms companies — some of them connected to his political allies — to continue supplying ammunition to Ukraine under commercial contracts, from which they earn considerable profits.)
This largely translated into Pellegrini avoiding direct confrontations with Korčok – or even campaigning much at all, instead relying on occasional appearances before sympathetic audiences while at the same time performing his relatively high-profile role as speaker of parliament.
Pellegrini’s campaign advisers have occasionally been exasperated by his lackadaisical approach. It is a reputation he acquired in the run-up to last year’s parliamentary election, at which his Hlas party, once considered likely to eclipse Fico’s Smer (from which it split in 2020), came in an aimless third. Just last week, after crying off a televised encounter with Korčok by claiming he had campaign commitments in the regions, Pellegrini was photographed relaxing a short distance from the Bratislava studio where the show was being taped.
None of this seems to have done him much harm. In part that is because, having made up with his one-time political mentor Fico and agreed to support his government, he was able to rely on the latter’s political attack machine to do his work for him.
This went into overdrive after Korčok’s first-round success, using proxies and disinformation media outlets — of which Slovaks are unusually fond — to portray Pellegrini’s opponent as a “warmonger” hellbent on sending Slovak troops to fight in Ukraine. The claim was nonsense – and Slovakia, a country with barely one-tenth of Ukraine’s population and considerably less than one-twentieth of Russia’s, would have virtually no effect on the war, even if it were to become involved – but hurt Korčok enough for him to identify it as one of the reasons for his defeat.
This reaction hints at another reason for the outcome. Korčok’s record and policy platform were impeccably pro-Western and would have been unremarkable – quite probably victorious – only 10 years ago. But his commitment to fair play left him vulnerable, as politicians of the same stripe elsewhere in Europe are increasingly discovering, to populist techniques and narratives that have undermined Slovaks’ trust in the EU and NATO.
The Korčok camp could have used some obvious, albeit ethically questionable, lines of attack against Pellegrini, who ran on a populist-nationalist family-values platform. At one point this self-styled “social democratic” leader (the term has long since lost all meaning in Slovakia) even declared a commitment – hitherto well-hidden – to Roman Catholicism, Slovakia’s majority faith.
However, Korčok declined to launch any direct or indirect attacks on him. The handful of TV debates that Pellegrini did eventually turn up to were bland affairs, with Korčok reportedly calculating that he risked losing votes by coming across as confrontational.
The end result was an emotional concession speech by Korčok, who fulminated against the Pellegrini campaign’s smear tactics and lack of transparency – but left his opponents in complete control of the state for at least the next three-and-a-half years.
The real winner is Prime Minister Fico, who has once again proved himself to be the most skilled and ruthless Slovak political operator of his generation.
His incessant, conspiracy-fueled and frequently misogynistic attacks on the current president, Zuzana Čaputová, clearly played a part in her decision not to run for re-election this year. Fico and his allies have hinted or stated outright that Čaputová is a “prostitute” for America; her teenage daughter has been smeared in the Smer-friendly media; he routinely ascribes the president’s words and actions not to genuinely held political beliefs but to the influence of George Soros, the Jewish philanthropist and Holocaust survivor who is a favorite bogeymen for populist extremists.
Witnessing his opponents observe conventional political rules as he eviscerates them has convinced Fico that they can be safely ignored. In 2018 he felt compelled to step down as prime minister after huge public protests (which he also tried to attribute to Soros) in the aftermath of the murder of a journalist — and his fiancée — who had been investigating government-linked corruption. It is hard to imagine that he would do the same were the scenario repeated today.
Instead, Fico will pursue what might be called “Orbánism with Slovak characteristics.”
The independence of the public broadcaster, for instance, is already within his sights: governance changes now being proposed would reduce it to a state mouthpiece, in the mold of its counterparts in neighboring Hungary, or in PiS-era Poland.
Last week, he publicly threatened several Supreme Court judges who have ruled in cases linked to his Smer party, saying they should face disciplinary action for – he alleged – acting on political orders. The Judicial Council, which is supposed to protect judges’ independence, protested – but is already being stuffed with government-aligned members.
In some ways, the presidential vote should be clarifying for Slovakia’s partners.
A Korčok victory would have provided a degree of relief in the EU and NATO, while offering a rather lopsided counterbalance to Premier Fico’s pro-Russian leadership.
No one can now be under any illusions about the sentiment of the country and the direction of the entire state apparatus.
Pellegrini, 48, has shown little independent political personality in his almost 20-year-long career. His big bet was to split with Fico four years ago and hope that a winning smile, the incompetence of his opponents, and voters’ familiarity with him would be enough to carry him to power. They weren’t, but he now has the consolation prize of the presidency.
Far sweeter, however, is Fico’s reward. In the last six months he has parlayed support of just 23% in last year’s election into a record fourth premiership, secured a lock on parliament, successfully curtailed most of the investigations into allegations of widespread wrongdoing by his associates – he now describes these probes as “human rights abuses” – and has helped get a fellow traveler elected as head of state.
For the moment at least, the prime minister has carte blanche.
James Thomson is a columnist for The Slovak Spectator, the Bratislava-based English-language newspaper and website.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
Ukraine 2036
How Today’s Investments Will Shape Tomorrow’s Security
CEPA Forum 2025
Explore CEPA’s flagship event.
