Czechs have chosen the outspoken Milos Zeman, an ex-premier, as their new president in runoff of the EU republic’s first direct election.<\/p>\n
Zemen on Saturday beat opposition candidate, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, with a 54,8 percent win with almost all the votes counted.<\/p>\n
“Milos Zeman has won, I acknowledge this, and I hope he will manage to be the president of all Czech people,” Schwarzenberg, who garnered 45,17 percent, of the votes, conceded as the final results rolled in Saturday.<\/p>\n
His victory ends a decade under strident eurosceptic outgoing 71-year-old President Vaclav Klaus, with 68-year-old Zeman, having a decidedly Europe-friendly approach.<\/p>\n
In 1998-2002, Zeman’s leftist government helped negotiate his country’s 2004 EU accession and Zeman is now a self-described “euro-federalist”.<\/p>\n
“I promise that as a president elected in a direct vote by citizens, I will do my best to be the voice of all citizens,” Zeman said in his victory speech at a Prague hotel, as overjoyed supporters chanted “Long live Zeman”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Czechs have chosen the outspoken Milos Zeman, an ex-premier, as their new president in runoff of the EU republic’s first direct election. Zemen on Saturday beat opposition candidate, Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, with a 54,8 percent win with almost all the votes counted. “Milos Zeman has won, I acknowledge this, and I hope he will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5411"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5411"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}