Slovak PM Throws Hat in Ring for Presidency

Slovakia's leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico said Wednesday he will stand in next year's presidential elections, ending months of speculation and instantly becoming a front-runner.

"I have officially decided to run for president," Fico told journalists in Bratislava, adding that he fancied his chances: "I am in good political shape," he said.

Opinion polls show the popular Fico, 49, is well placed to win the spring 2014 elections to succeed leftist President Ivan Gasparovic in the post-communist country of 5.4 million.

The other 14 candidates in the running so far include former parliament speaker Pavol Hrusovsky, a Christian Democrat, and actor Milan Knazko, a leading figure of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that peacefully dismantled communism in the then Czechoslovakia.

In 1993, it agreed to split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which joined the European Union in 2004 and the eurozone in 2009.

Fico was a member of the Czechoslovak communist party from 1987 until the country shed communism in 1989.

Should he win, Fico would be the youngest president ever elected in Slovakia after two stints as prime minister, a more powerful position than the largely ceremonial presidency.

Analysts in Bratislava see a shrewd calculation in his wish to switch jobs.

"Fico realizes that it can be very difficult to serve three terms as prime minister," Marian Lesko, a political analyst for the business weekly Trend, told Agence France Presse. "It's a position that, after a certain period, politically destroys a man."

While Fico's one-party government will be backed by a strong majority of 83 lawmakers in the 150-member parliament until general elections in 2016, his absence as Smer party leader could destabilize it.

"Smer is a very centralized party. Its members are used to one person making all the important decisions," Lesko said.

But another analyst was puzzled by the decision.

"Of all candidates, Fico has the most to lose and the least to gain," commentator Peter Schutz said in the Wednesday edition of Slovakia's mass-circulation SME daily.

In power since April 2012, Fico scrapped the country's business-friendly 19 percent flat tax and hiked the tax on corporate revenues to 23 percent, a move economists said discouraged investment.

Meanwhile he has maintained popularity among thrifty Slovaks by keeping pensions and welfare benefits intact.

His leftist government has pledged to cut the budget deficit under the EU's ceiling of 3.0 percent next year.

Fico scored his second but non-consecutive term as prime minister when Smer won March 2012 elections by a landslide as voters ousted center-right parties plagued by corruption scandals.

Slovakia is home to several global electronics plants and carmakers -- including Germany's Volkswagen, South Korean Kia and France's PSA Peugeot Citroen -- whose production soared this year despite a weak recovery in the eurozone.