The Czech president, Miloš Zeman, has been elected to a second five-year term after winning a runoff vote.
Results from the Czech Statistical Office on Saturday showed Zeman receiving 51.8% of the votes cast in the two-day, second-round election, with nearly all the ballots counted. His opponent, the former head of the Academy of Sciences, Jiří Drahoš, had 48.2%.
Drahoš conceded defeat to Zeman. “I would like to congratulate election winner Milos Zeman,” he told a crowd of supporters.
Zeman is the country’s third president – after Václav Havel and Václav Klaus – since Czechoslovakia was split in 1993. The 73-year-old former prime minister was elected in 2013 during the republic’s first presidential election to be decided by voters, not politicians.
Since then, he has divided the nation with his pro-Russia stance and support for closer ties with China. Drahoš, a 68-year-old political newcomer, was viewed as more western-oriented.
