BRATISLAVA: Slovakia voted on Saturday in an election dominated by calls for change, with an anti-corruption activist likely to be chosen as its first female president a year after a journalist’s murder sparked mass anti-government protests.

An environmental lawyer with no experience in political office, Zuzana Caputova is on course to win the run-off against ruling party’s candidate and EU energy comm­­issioner Maros Sefcovic.

Two recent opinion polls gave at least 60 percent of the vote to Caputova, who campaigned on a slogan of “Stand up to evil” in this central European country of 5.4 million.

She was one of tens of thousands of protesters who rallied after investigative journalist Jan Kuciak was gunned down alongside his fiancee.

He had been preparing to publish a story on alleged ties between Slovak politicians and the Italian mafia.

The killing forced then prime minister Robert Fico to resign but he remains leader of the populist-left Smer-SD party and is a close ally of the current premier. Five people have been charged in the Kuciak case, including a millionaire businessman with alleged ties to Smer-SD who is suspected of ordering the murders.

The European Parliament has urged Slovakia to continue investigating, “including any possible political links to the crimes.” MEPs voiced “concern about the allegations of corruption, conflicts of interest, impunity and revolving doors in Slovakia’s circles of power.” Smer-SD has backed Sefcovic, which may have cost him in the first round when the 52-year-old took just 19 percent of the vote compared with Caputova’s 40 percent.

Published in Dawn, March 31st, 2019