Slovak President Zuzana Caputova announced she wouldn’t stand for re-election next year in a live address on Tuesday afternoon, June 20, in what she described as a difficult personal decision.

“This announcement will be one of the most difficult ones I have made and will yet make in my life,” Caputova opened her statement at the Presidential Castle in Bratislava after days of local media anticipating this would be her announcement not to stand for re-election.

"Prior to announcing my decision I had to assess my strength for another, potentially six years. After a very sincere assessment I know today that I wouldnt have enough strength for another mandate," she confessed.

“My service in this position will be fulfilled,” she added and apologised “for disappointing those who expected me to stand”.

Caputova was elected in 2019 and has continuously been Slovakia’s most trusted politician, although her popularity dwindled a little in the latter part of her mandate and following her appointment of a technocratic cabinet in response to the country's protracted political crisis.

According to a June poll conducted by Ipsos polling agency and published by the liberal daily Dennik N on June 20, Caputova is trusted by 43%, ahead of the leader of the opposition Hlas-SD party Robert Pellegrini (37%) and the prime minister of the technocratic cabinet Ludovit Odor (33%).

Former lawyer and activist Caputova was elected amid political instability following the murder of investigative journalist Jan Kuciak and his fiancé Martina Kusnirova in 2018 and the ensuing protests which brought down populist Prime Minister Robert Fico, who was blamed for allowing, if not enabling, business interests to capture the police and judiciary.

Caputova personified the change in Slovak politics, but she found herself in the middle of another political crisis when disputes in the new government between cabinet members Richard Sulik (SaS party) and Igor Matovic (OLaNO) culminated in the fall of Eduard Heger’s cabinet late last year.      

“I have appointed 4 cabinets in 4 years and will appoint a 5^th one in the autumn,” Caputova pointed out in anticipation of the early elections, which are the main focus of Slovak politics at the moment.

Fico, who has moved to openly pro-Kremlin positions after being consigned to opposition after the 2020  general elections, and his Smer-SD have been in the lead of the polls, followed by centrist Progressive Slovakia, a party which Caputova left when she took the presidential office, and Pellegrini’s Hlas-SD, a centre-left breakaway party of Smer-SD.

Fico’s inflammatory rhetoric and derogatory comments directed at Caputova are widely speculated to be behind Caputova’s decision not to run. Fico has repeatedly described Caputova as an “American stooge” and referred to Odor’s technocratic cabinet as “Caputova’s government” in his aggressive effort to pull Caputova into the election campaign.   

Caputova’s two daughters had to live under police protection after threats were made to her family, and in May she said she would take legal action against Fico.

Fico “knows that making somebody a target with hateful lies has led to killings in Slovakia,” Caputova stated in May, alluding to the tragic shooting in Bratislava last autumn when a radicalised teen went out to target Jewish and LGBT+ people, eventually gunning down three people and killing two of them in front of LGBT+ friendly bar Teplaren.

Caputova has repeatedly spoken against online hatred and recently warned that Slovakia could succumb to Russian propaganda and disinformation. Just last week, an online news outlet where Kuciak worked, Aktuality.sk, reported that the influential Russian pro-Kremlin Telegram channel Rybar is spreading hoaxes about the election campaign in Slovakia and backs Fico.

Earlier, in an interview for Aktuality.sk, Caputova said that lies directed against her by extremists and populists are not just  “discomforting” but that these also “cast doubt on the legitimacy of the office I represent, and that is too much,” adding that it has also “intruded into the security of my family”.

In an interview published in Slovak daily Sme on June 20, Caputova said it would be wrong to interpret her decision as being "driven out of politics", adding that she is "not leaving anywhere" and that "even Robert Fico could understand this". She said, however, that attacks against family members are "unacceptable" and "devastate society as a whole" . 

Caputova will leave office next June. In her statement, Caputova stressed that with “this decision [not to stand], I am not resigning on defending the values I have been defending”, and she planned to remain active in political debates.