Czechia – As was foreseen after the main candidates eliminated in the first round of the Czech presidential election endorsed the candidacy of General Petr Pavel against former PM Andrej Babiš, the former won in the second round held last weekend, and did so with over 58% of the votes. Pavel will thus succeed Miloš Zeman, a social democrat, as Czechia’s head of state.
Andrej Babiš came out on top only in the northern Bohemian border districts, in Moravian Silesia, and in the districts of Znojmo (South Moravia) and Přerov (Central Moravia). General Pavel won by a wide margin in large cities, including the capital Prague, where he obtained 76.4%, and also in Brno (68.2%), Plzeň (63.6%), Liberec (63.6%), Olomouc (62.9%), České Budějovice (63.3%), Hradec Králové (65.8%), Ústí nad Labem (57.5%), and Pardubice (63.2%), with his opponent doing well only in the city of Ostrava (52.3%).
The new president-elect was immediately congratulated by Slovakia’s president Zuzana Čaputová, who came to visit him in Prague at his election headquarters, thus marking the traditional good understanding between the two countries that used to make up Czechoslovakia. Pavel said of the visit: “The most beautiful congratulations came from Slovak President Zuzana Čaputová. Her presence at the election headquarters was a beautiful moment that I will remember for a long time. She came just for that.” Pavel has already announced his intention to visit Ukraine soon, together with Čaputová: “It would be good in the spring, because the NATO summit will then be in preparation and the Slovak president will be there, as well as the Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. It would be nice if we could agree on things before the summit. ”
Born on 1 November 1961 in Planá, in the Pilsen region, General Petr Pavel, who will take office on 9 March 2023, served as chief of the General Staff of the Czech Army in 2012–2015 and then as chairman of the NATO Military Committee in 2015–2018. He is known for having led a mission that rescued French soldiers during the evacuation of the Karin base in Croatia in late January 1993.
