Czech rivals Milos Zeman, a former premier and veteran left-winger, and right-wing Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, topped the results of the presidential election Saturday and will face off in a runoff later this month.
Zeman, 68, garnered 25 percent of votes while Schwarzenberg, 75, scored 21.2 percent, the Czech Statistical Office said, with 75 percent of ballots counted after the two-day first round wound up at 1300 GMT.
The second-round run-off is scheduled for January 25-26.
Former centre-right prime minister Jan Fischer, who had led opinion polls ahead the vote, scored 17.06 percent, ahead of leftist senator Jiri Dienstbier with 16.7 percent.
“Jan Fischer was rather weak in debates. Confronted with his rivals, he didn’t offer much,” Tomas Lebeda, a political analyst at Charles University in Prague, told public broadcaster Czech Television.
Vladimir Franz, an eccentric artist who is tattooed head-to-toe, was running fifth among the nine contenders with seven-percent support in the vote whose turnout topped 60 percent.
The winner will replace outgoing eurosceptic Vaclav Klaus, whose mandate expires on March 7.
The Czech Republic is an ex-communist NATO and EU member with population of 10.5 million.
Zeman, Schwarzenberg in Czech presidential run-off
