Favored Candidate Leading in Polls

Rudolf Schuster, the four-party coalition government candidate and the firm favorite in Slovakia’s presidential elections, holds a strong lead in the first round, an exit poll showed. But with no candidate likely to take the 50% of all eligible voters needed to score outright victory, a winner-take-all runoff between the two top candidates looks certain on May 29. The poll, conducted by the private MVK agency for Slovak television, said Schuster had taken 49.7% of the vote, with former Premier Vladimir Meciar in second place with 31.7%. Uniquely in Europe, Slovakia has been without a head of state for more than a year. It slipped into constitutional hiatus March 2, 1998, when the last president, Michal Kovac, stepped down at the end of his term of office.