Suzana Caputova elected as first woman President of Slovakia

Suzana Caputova, a lawyer by profession is all set to become the first female President of Slovakia after registering a major victory in the runoff election against the ruling party candidate. Caputova was known as a vocal critic of the government whose slogan was always “stand up to evil”. The slogan was not known to the Slovak society before the campaign was launched by Caputova in the country of 5.4 million people.

Caputova is pro-European politician and has won the election with 58.3 percent votes of the total recorded voting of 98.1 percent. The results will be officially declared on Sunday. Caputova told her supporters that, “ I am happy not just for the result but mainly that it is possible not to succumb to populism, to tell the truth, to raise interest without aggressive vocabulary”.

Maros Sefeovic who has the backing of the ruling Smer party, successfully secured 41.7 percent of the votes. Sefeovic who is also the Vice President of the European Commission and thus is an establishment figure, congratulated Caputova and accepted his defeat.

Caputova is said to have won the elections basically due to voter disillusionment about the governing coalition after a year of the murder of a journalist who was investigating a high-level corruption scandal which had pushed the country into fresh crisis. Caputova had been among the thousands of protestors who had taken to streets to protest against the murder of Jan Kuciak and his fiancé Martina Kusnirova who were both shot at their own home in February 2018. It is said that Kuciak was about to publish a report about illegal relations between the politicians of Slovakia and also the Italian mafia.

Robert Fico who was the Prime Minister of Slovakia at that time and had to give his resignation over the incident. Fico still remains the head of the ruling party and is very close to the current premier Peter Pellegrini. The European Parliament has asked Slovakia to look for any political links with crimes.

Caputova stated that she will start many changes which will deprive the prosecutors and also the police of the political influence which had been protecting them so far.