Speaker of Parliament Peter Pellegrini, who chairs the coalition party Hlas, will become Slovakia’s next president.
Pellegrini received 53.12 percent (1,409,255 votes), while Korčok ended up in second place with 46.87 percent (1,243,709 votes). Korčok won the first round, which was a surprise to many.
The Statistics Office ended the counting process at 2:00 on Sunday morning, when it announced on its website that all the votes had been counted.
The predictions made by the dailies Sme and Denník N on Saturday night confirmed shortly before 23:30 that former diplomat Ivan Korčok was no longer capable of outrunning Pellegrini. At that time, more than 80 percent of the votes had already been counted.
The turnout in the runoff round reached 61.14 percent. This is the second-highest turnout since 1999, when the president was elected directly for the first time.
Shortly before midnight, Korčok congratulated Pellegrini on becoming the president-elect and said he hopes Pellegrini will act without orders coming from the government. Korčok has been a vocal critic of the current government, which has done purges in the police and cancelled the Special Prosecutor's Office to stop the investigation of high-profile corruption. It is attempting to change the Penal Code and to get the public broadcaster RTVS under its control.
Dozens of people who served under the previous Smer-led governments have been convicted of corruption and other serious crimes.
"I'm disappointed," Korčok also admitted.
In response to the smear campaign waged against him by Pellegrini and his team several days before the runoff round, the forme diplomat said: "I will never forget what you've done to me." Pellegrini and the ruling coalition portrayed him as the "president of war".
Korčok is a strong supporter of Ukraine, like President Zuzana Čaputová, but Peter Pellegrini has been calling for peace in Ukraine for a long time and opposing any military aid to Ukraine. In his campaign, he also claimed that Korčok would send Slovak soldiers to Ukraine to fight in the war. However, this is not the presidential competence.
"Fear has decided the election," Korčok said. He noted that Pellegrini won despite the fact that his campaign was non-transparent.
President Zuzana Čaputová, whose term will end on June 15, also congratulated Pellegrini on Saturday night.
After midnight, Pellegrini pledged that the ruling coalition will remain stable and said that he will support the government. He's been nicknamed a "minion" by the public since late 2023. During the post-parliamentary election talks, the Hlas chair claimed that he wouldn't be anyone's minion. Thus far, his party has supported all the moves announced by the Smer-led coalition.
"I won't be an uncritical admirer of the government," he announced on Saturday night. Nevertheless, he repeated the government's position on the war in Ukraine, and that Slovakia will "remain on the side of peace, not on the side of war." Fico's cabinet halted military aid to its neighbour last year, but his cabinet continues to support commercial arms deals, including those concluded by state-owned firms.
"I will advocate for Slovakia, as its interests hold utmost importance to me," the speaker of parliament also stated. Pellegrini, like PM and Smer party leader Robert Fico, believes that Slovakia cannot agree with everything what the EU and NATO say.
As for his campaign, he said that it wasn't based on marketing, nor on the fight against anyone. Pellegrini, who copies the positions of populist PM Fico when it comes to the country's foreign policy, didn't respond to Korčok's accusations.
Standing by the president-elect, Fico said, "Long live Peter Pellegrini, long live the president, long live the Slovak Republic."
It's known that their relationship isn't ideal. Ahead of the second round, Fico said that Pellegrini was not "an ideal candidate". Fico ran for president in 2014. He lost to entrepreneur and philanthropist Andrej Kiska. He then received almost 900,000 votes, which is significantly less than Pellegrini's 1.4 million votes.
Pellegrini had been Smer's top party official for many years. He left in 2020, two years after the murder of investigative journalist Ján Kuciak and after Smer lost the 2020 parliamentary election, and pledged that he would never sit in a government with Fico. Pellegrini then established his new party, Hlas, which Fico didn't like. Still, they formed a ruling coalition last year, also with the Slovak National Party.
On early Sunday morning, Pellegrini ended his press conference with: "May God protect the Slovak Republic."
