Slovak millionaire turned philanthropist Andrej Kiska has capitalised on his image as an untainted political novice to win his improbable bid for the presidency.
The self-made consumer credit tycoon, who reinvented himself as a professional do-gooder, emerged from obscurity to clobber veteran leftist Prime Minister Robert Fico, his defeated rival in Saturday’s run-off election.
Kiska, 51, thus becomes Slovakia’s first non-communist and non-partisan president since the country secured independence in 1993.
In another first, the self-made millionaire vowed to donate his salary to charity for the entire five-year term.
“I believe that those who have received a lot from life have the duty to give back,” he said on the campaign trail.
The twice-married father of four, wooed voters with the slogan that he has the “heart, brains and character” to be Slovakia’s head of state.
He cultivated a down-to-earth image to deflect criticism of his inexperience and lack of charisma, resonating with voters disillusioned by corruption scandals implicating right-wing politicians in 2011.
“Traditional politicians do not deal with the real problems of real people, so I decided to run for president in order to try and change that,” he told AFP.
Bratislava-based pollster Pavol Haulik believes Kiska holds appeal for voters who are “looking for someone who hasn’t let them down yet”.
Kiska, pointing to his humble roots in Poprad, a poor provincial town nestled in the foothills of the northern High Tatra mountains, insists he relates better to the problems of ordinary people than politicians from the affluent capital Bratislava.
- Self-made man -
His own story of hard-earned financial success was also a selling point with voters, and lends credence to his pledges to improve public health care and social welfare, analysts say.
Kiska emigrated to the United States in 1990, a year after communism’s demise in what was then Czechoslovakia.
In what he has called his “road to hell and back”, Kiska learned valuable life lessons by working long hours in construction and retail to make ends meet.
He returned home in 1992 to launch two successful micro-credit companies, Triangel and Quatro, a savvy business move targeting the consumer boom on the flourishing free market.
Kiska capitalised on their success in 2005, selling off his company shares to Slovakia’s VUB bank — owned by the Italian group Intesa Sanpaolo — and using the money to launch Dobry Anjel (Good Angel), which helps terminally ill children and is the country’s top charity.
Kiska was named Slovakia’s “Manager of the Year” in 2006 and won another top accolade for philanthropy in 2011.
He floated his presidential bid a year later, long before any of his rivals, while his reputation was at its glowing best.
The self-proclaimed euro enthusiast has vowed to be a centrist president and thus a valuable counterweight to the powerful leftist government of Prime Minister Fico, which enjoys a comfortable parliamentary majority.
He has also admitted to bouts of soul-searching and having “flirted” with Judaism and Buddhism before returning to Catholicism in his autobiography titled “A Manager’s Road from Hell”.
A bid by challenger Fico to paint Kiska as an incompetent political novice and Scientologist — a claim Kiska denied — fell flat with voters.
Andrej Kiska: 'first time lucky' Slovak philanthropist scores presidency
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