Zuzana Caputova: Meet Slovakia's first female president

Anti-corruption lawyer and environmentalist Zuzana Caputova has been elected as the first female president of Slovakia.

Caputova, who has no prior experience in political office, won with 58% votes against her opponent Maros Sefcovic with 42% of the votes.

The 45-year-old, liberal lawyer thanked her supporters on her win. She said that her victory showed that, “you can win without attacking your opponents.” She added, "This campaign ‘Stand up against evil’ has shown that values such as humanism, solidarity and truth are important to our society.”

Caputova is due to take the office from June 2019.

She gained popularity for 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.

She cited Jan Kuciak’s murder as one the reason she decided to run for president, which is a largely a ceremonial role. She had called the last few weeks "extremely challenging" and "an intense journey".

More recently, she took to the streets of the central European country of 5.4 million along with tens of thousands of other anti-government protesters after investigative journalist Jan Kuciak was gunned down alongside his fiancée in February 2018.

He had been preparing to publish a story on alleged ties between Slovak politicians and the Italian mafia.

The killings forced then Prime Minister Robert Fico to resign but he remained the leader of the governing populist-left Smer-SD party.