Social Democrat Peter Pellegrini, supported by the coalition government with proximity to Russia and Hungary, and the diplomat Ivan Korcok, supported by the liberal and progressive opposition who defend to help Ukraine militarily, will compete for the Presidency of Slovakia in a second round on April 6.
With 85% of the scrutiny, Korcok achieved 39.2% of the ballots, while Pellegrini received 39%, according to the statistical office that offered the live scrutiny.
Since his return to power at the head of a coalition of leftist populists and ultra-nationalists, Prime Minister Robert Fico has reoriented foreign policy towards a more favorable position to Russia and has attacked independent institutions, such as the judiciary, dismantling the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office that investigated senior officials in the formation of the head of the Government.
In this context, the Presidency becomes a key position to control the executive power.
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“The country is not well and I want it to move,” Korkoc said after learning the preliminary results that give the passage to the second round and in reference to the massive protests against the latest measures of the coalition executive.
“Slovakia has lost the compass in foreign policy,” the experienced diplomat also said about the radical turn that has meant to stop supporting Ukraine militarily since Fico came to power, unlike what happened in the previous legislature.
The participation of 50 percent was slightly higher than the 48 percent there was five years ago, when the current head of state, Zuzana Caputova, and the then vice president of the European Commission, Maros Sefcovic, passed the second round.
Pellegrini stressed that the country now needs “concord,” and “not to witness continuous conflicts between politicians and institutional representatives.”
It must be seen which of the two candidates will be able to attract the most nationalist and radical vote that has not managed to be represented in these elections, since, despite the differences in political ideology, there are many points on which Pellegrini and Korcok agree, the latter has recognized.
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Pellegrini already has a remarkable trajectory: he has been prime minister and currently presides over Parliament for the second time.
In addition, he leads his own party, La Voz (“Hlas”), after having been a minister on several occasions.
Hlas is a split of the social democratic formation Smer de Fico, the politician who has been at the head of the Government in Slovakia for the longest time and who in recent years, since the pandemic, has resulted in populist, anti-immigration, reluctant with vaccines and pro-Russian positions.
The main criticism that Pellegrini receives is that he has not managed to disassociate himself from the figure of his previous leader, Fico, and it is unknown if as president he will be able to put a halt to some of the reforms of the Executive that violate the rule of law.
Korcok, 59, former foreign minister and former ambassador in the United States, Germany and the EU, presents himself as the counterweight to the current government.
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His profile is close to that of the outgoing president, the liberal Caputova, who has hindered the controversial reforms of the Government.
On April 6, the Slovaks will choose the successor of Caputova, the country’s first female president, after she decided not to seek a second term. The outgoing president, who has sued Prime Minister Fico for calling her a “traitor” and an “American agent,” says she does not have the energy to continue for another five years, citing threats against her family in a very polarized period of Slovak politics.
Caputova expressed his hope that his successor “will represent the country well abroad.”
A court orders the arrest of the Ukrainian Minister of Agriculture accused of corruption
The Supreme Anti-Corruption Court of Ukraine issued a preventive arrest warrant on Friday against the Minister of Agriculture, Mikola Solski, accused of being part of a plot that would have illegally appropriated about 2,500 hectares of land that belonged to the State before his arrival at the Ministry.
According to Ukrainian media, the court has issued a sixty-day arrest warrant, which Solski can avoid if he pays a bail of 75.7 million gryvnas (1.78 million euros at the current exchange rate).
Solski presented his resignation on Thursday – which must now be accepted by the Ukrainian Parliament – after being accused this week by the Anti-Corruption Office of Ukraine (NABU) of participating in a transfer of publicly owned land valued at 291 million gryvnas (about 7 million euros).
In addition, the organization investigates the still minister for trying to transfer another lot of land in an equally criminal way, valued at 190 million gryvnas (4.5 million euros).
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The events occurred, according to the Anti-Corruption Office, between 2017 and 2021.
From 2019 to 2021, Solski was president of the Committee on Agriculture and Land Policy of the Ukrainian Parliament and in 2022 he was appointed minister.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has marked himself as one of his priorities to combat corruption at the highest level in time of war to modernize the country and meet the requirements for access to the European Union.
The Chinese president tells the United States that he has to be “faithful” to his word to solve the “problems to be solved”
Chinese President Xi Jinping has told the US Secretary of State Antony Blinken that the United States must “be faithful to its word” in order to solve the “problems still to be solved” in the bilateral relationship.
“China and the United States have gone through ups and downs but we must respect each other, cooperate and coexist. We must be partners and not harm each other, and for that we have to look for common ground, be faithful to the words and determined with the facts,” Xi said during the meeting.
According to a statement from the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Xi also warned that “you can’t say one thing and then do another,” after which he acknowledged that, “despite the consensus and progress made” in recent months there are still “many problems to solve and room to make an effort.”
“This year we celebrate the 45th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations. The important thing we have learned in this time is that we must be partners, not rivals. That we must achieve a mutual benefit instead of harming each other. The important thing is to look for the common points and put aside the differences,” Xi said during the meeting.
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The Chinese president received Blinken this Friday in Beijing for an interview that was not part of the agenda of the official visit made to China by the American diplomat.
This is the second time Xi has received Blinken in Beijing, given that the Chinese president already met the American on his last visit to the Chinese capital in June 2023.
Before his meeting with Xi, Blinken also met today in Beijing with his Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, who warned him of “growing problems” in bilateral relations, after the U.S. Senate approved a bill that will force the Chinese company ByteDance to sell the popular TikTok video application if he does not want the platform to be banned in the United States.
ByteDance, the parent company of the platform, has made it clear today that it has no intention of selling the application despite US legislation.
Earlier this week, TikTok – which, like Western services such as Google, Facebook, X or Instagram, is blocked in China, where ByteDance operates a similar application called Douyin – already anticipated that it would challenge the new US law, which it considers “unconstitutional” in court.
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U.S. legislators justify their decision by arguing that the platform poses a threat to the national security of the United States due to the possibility that the Chinese government will access user data.
In March, China criticized the “repression” against the application by the United States for being “an intimidating tactic” that will eventually “turn against” the North American country.
Israeli bombings in the north and south of Gaza cause fifty deaths
The latest Israeli attacks and bombings along the Gaza Strip have caused the death of at least 51 people, most of them civilians, both in Gaza City (north) and in the southern area of Rafah.
Israeli fighter planes bombed a house belonging to the Al Shawa family last night, in the Al Rimal neighborhood, in Gaza City, where rescue teams recovered the lifeless bodies of three people, including those of a child and a woman, under the rubble.
As Palestinian sources reported to the WAFA news agency today, the victims and several injuries were transferred to the Al Ahli Arab Hospital, the last hospital in operation in Gaza City after the Israeli military siege left the Al Shifa inoperative in March.
Other bombings in the neighborhoods of Zaytun, south of Gaza City, and against a residential building in the center of the city, caused the death of another Gazan, as well as an indeterminate number of injuries.
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In Rafah, one fisherman died and another was injured, according to Palestinian medical sources, while in the center of the enclave several Gazans were injured in attacks against the refugee camps of Nuseirat and Bureij.
According to the latest figures provided on Thursday by the Ministry of Health of the Government of Hamas, more than 34,300 Palestinians have already died in Gaza, 75% women and children.
One of those little ones is a Gaza baby rescued from her mother’s womb, who died in an Israeli airstrike perpetrated in Rafah last weekend.
After five days of struggle to stay alive, he has finally died, as confirmed this Friday by a family member.
Over the weekend, 16 other children were killed in Rafah, where Israel is expected to start a ground offensive.
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A member of the Hamas political bureau asked the 18 signatory countries yesterday on Friday of a joint statement demanding the Islamists the “immediate” release of the 133 hostages, to also pressure Israel to accept a truce in the Gaza Strip.
Your sons and daughters are no more valuable than our sons and daughters,” the head of political and international relations of the political bureau of Hamas, Basem Naim, to which EFE had access, said today in a message.
Today, a delegation of the Egyptian Intelligence service is scheduled to arrive in Israel, in an attempt to revive the stagnant truce negotiations mediated by Cairo, Qatar and the United States, Egyptian security sources told EFE last night.
From Geneva, UN rapporteurs demanded that Israel allow the arrival in Gaza of the Freedom Flotilla that it plans to sail this Friday from Istanbul with 5,500 tons of humanitarian aid.
Diplomats have warned that the safe transit guarantee of this initiative is part of Israeli international obligations to prevent genocide in Palestinian territory.
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“Israel must comply with international law, including the recent orders of the International Court of Justice, to ensure the unhindered arrival of humanitarian aid,” they said in a statement.
Israel warned on Friday that any arrival of aid to Gaza other than by air, land border crossings or the port of Ashdod will constitute a “provocation,” after being asked by EFE about the administrative blockade that the Freedom Flotilla – a civilian initiative organized by human rights activists – says it is suffering in Istanbul.
