Zuzana Caputova becomes Slovakia's first female President

"I am happy not just for the result, but mainly that it is possible not to succumb to populism, to tell the truth, to raise interest without aggressive vocabulary," Zuzana Caputova told supporters.

Ms. Caputova won the election with 58.4 percent votes after results from 98.1 percent of voting districts were counted. 

In the first round of the election, Zuzana Caputova won a landslide victory with 40.5%, well ahead of her opponent Maros Sefcovic’s 18.7%.

Zuzana Caputova will be the first woman to hold the Presidency, as well as the youngest President in the history of Slovakia. She will officially take office and replace President Andrej Kiska at Bratislava’s Presidential Palace in June.

More than 4 million people were eligible to cast their ballots in the poll, a run-off contest between the two candidates who gained the most votes in the first round of the elections on March 16th.

Ms. Caputova first achieved renown by prevailing in a decade-long struggle against the situating of a toxic landfill in her hometown of Pezinok. For this, she was awarded a 2016 Goldman Environmental Prize./.