Political newcomer and millionaire Andrej Kiska emerged out of nowhere to win a landslide in Saturday’s Slovak presidential run-off, preventing veteran leftist Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico from tightening his grip on power.
A non-aligned centrist who made his fortune in the consumer-credit business, the 51-year-old Kiska will be Slovakia’s first president since independence in 1993 without a past in the nation’s communist party.
“I want to re-establish the people’s trust in the office of president,” Kiska said in a victory speech at his campaign headquarters in the capital, Bratislava.
The millionaire-turned-philanthropist who has given away most of his fortune to charity also vowed to “make politics more human.”
Fico, who will likely stay on as prime minister in the runup to a 2016 general election, conceded defeat as results showed Kiska winning a landslide.
Based on results from 99 percent the vote, Kiska scored 59.4 percent of the vote compared to Fico’s 40.6 percent result, the election commission said.
“This election was a referendum on Fico and his government, and he clearly lost it,” Grigorij Meseznikov, Bratislava-based analyst from the Slovak Institute for Public Affairs said of the prime minister’s failed attempt to monopolize power.
“The vast majority of voters have expressed their disillusion with Fico, he was unable to mobilise his core voters,” Meseznikov added.
A prospect of Smer winning control of both parliament and the presidency galvanized opponents in the country of 5.4 million, which joined the EU in 2004 and the eurozone in 2009.
Fico’s party has a majority 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, with the next general election scheduled for 2016.
Analysts also warned that if he had taken the presidency, Fico could have tried to amend the constitution to boost presidential powers and transform the parliamentary system into a presidential one.
Crucially, Kiska sold himself as a bulwark against a Fico power grab.
“I voted for Kiska to prevent Fico from winning,” Denisa Angyalova said as she cast her ballot earlier on Saturday in a sunny Bratislava, adding: “Fico is too power-hungry and I don’t want one party to rule.”
Her sentiments were echoed by pensioner Stefan Horvath: “I voted for Kiska because he is not as corrupt as other politicians. He brings a breath of fresh air to politics and he understands people.”
Endorsed by heavyweight European Socialists like French President Francois Hollande and European Parliament President Martin Schulz, veteran leftist Fico, 49, had tried to cast Kiska as politically naive and out of his depth.
However, Kiska, who is widely regarded as a self-made man with a very good nose for business, capitalized on his image as a political greenhorn untainted by the kind of corruption allegations that have ravaged Slovakia’s right wing.
Politics in Slovakia were rocked to the core in 2011 when a secret-service file, code-named “Gorilla,” leaked on the Internet revealed alleged links between oligarchs from a private financial group and nearly all of the right-wing political elite.
In the 2012 general election, angry voters ousted right-of-center politicians and Fico won by a landslide, enabling him to form a one-party government backed by a strong independent majority in the parliament.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
BEYOND WASHINGTON: Although historically the US has been the partner of choice for military exercises, Jakarta has been trying to diversify its partners, an analyst said Indonesia’s first joint military drills with Russia this week signal that new Indonesian President Prabowo Subianto would seek a bigger role for Jakarta on the world stage as part of a significant foreign policy shift, analysts said. Indonesia has long maintained a neutral foreign policy and refuses to take sides in the Russia-Ukraine conflict or US-China rivalry, but Prabowo has called for stronger ties with Moscow despite Western pressure on Jakarta. “It is part of a broader agenda to elevate ties with whomever it may be, regardless of their geopolitical bloc, as long as there is a benefit for Indonesia,” said Pieter
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
US ELECTION: Polls show that the result is likely to be historically tight. However, a recent Iowa poll showed Harris winning the state that Trump won in 2016 and 2020 US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris courted voters angered by the Gaza war while former US President and Republican candidate Donald Trump doubled down on violent rhetoric with a comment about journalists being shot as the tense US election campaign entered its final hours. The Democratic vice president and the Republican former president frantically blitzed several swing states as they tried to win over the last holdouts with less than 36 hours left until polls open on election day today. Trump predicted a “landslide,” while Harris told a raucous rally in must-win Michigan that “we have momentum — it’s