Elections to the post of Slovak president aren’t due to take place until next year, but the country’s current president has made them a hot political topic by announcing he won’t be taking part. Andrej Kiska revealed that he wouldn’t seek a second term in office after a bruising first half of the year in which he had to pick up the pieces of shattered public trust following the murder of an investigative journalist. Kiska played a crucial role in forcing the prime minister and his minister of the interior to resign but Slovaks remain skeptical whether real change has occurred.
Over the weekend, Kiska revealed that he had felt compelled to make his decision known as early as possible in order to give time for strong new candidates to build a candidacy rather than making them wait for him to show his cards. He also hinted that he didn’t plan to leave public life but said it would take a bit of time to organize his next move and that an announcement would be coming soon.
The head of the Mosta-Hid party said the governing coalition was unlikely to be putting forward a common candidate for president. He told a Sunday news program that his party would be putting forward its own candidate following a vote on who it should be in June. His decision not to run for president has been seen as a blow by the EU who saw him as a staunch ally of the European project in a region now riddled with skeptics.
