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Former Prime Minister Is Elected President of Czech Republic

PRAGUE — Milos Zeman, a burly former leftist prime minister and economist known for his outspoken populism, was elected president of the Czech Republic on Saturday, becoming the country’s first popularly elected president.

The election of Mr. Zeman, 68, an avowed supporter of European integration, signals the end of the era of Vaclav Klaus, the Czech president for the past 10 years, whose vociferous skepticism of the European Union and scorn for the battle against climate change made him a sometimes awkward partner in Europe and the United States.

With all of the vote counted, Mr. Zeman, a feisty man of the people who is often seen with a glass of Czech beer, won 55 percent compared with 45 percent for Karel Schwarzenberg, a pipe-smoking prince who is foreign minister in the current center-right coalition government. During the campaign, Mr. Zeman linked Mr. Schwarzenberg to unpopular austerity measures, including tough spending cuts.

Speaking with characteristic bluntness after his victory was announced, Mr. Zeman said he wanted to be the president of all the Czechs, but “not of Godfather structures here,” an allusion to the country’s problems with corruption.

While the Czech presidency is largely ceremonial, the president influences foreign policy, makes central bank appointments and approves judges. Parliament used to select the winner.

The election campaign between a left-leaning populist and an urbane conservative deeply polarized the country. Mr. Schwarzenberg, retooled as a punk rocker in his campaign posters, struck a chord with middle-class urbanites yearning for a change. But it was Mr. Zeman who ultimately won the hearts of a majority of Czechs, buffeted by economic hard times.

Once considered an economic and democratic stalwart among the former Soviet bloc countries, the Czech Republic has been suffering from weak economic growth and a spate of corruption scandals.

Vaclav Havel, the hero of the 1989 Velvet Revolution that brought down Communism, died in late 2011, depriving the Czechs of their most celebrated moral leader. There is also a feeling of disappointment here that his revolution came up short.

Mr. Zeman is widely regarded as a canny pragmatist who, as prime minister from 1998 to 2002, helped modernize the economy, setting the stage for the country to join the European Union in 2004.

Petr Pithart, a former prime minister and lawyer, who has known Mr. Zeman for decades, said he was strong-willed and could prove to be an even more volatile presence in the Prague Castle, the seat of the Czech president, than the provocative Mr. Klaus. Mr. Zeman has indicated he will attend cabinet meetings and try to influence important legislation. Mr. Pithart predicted he would push the presidential powers to their limits and make life difficult for the government.

“Zeman is viewed as a relic of the past,” he said. “He plays on basic fears like xenophobia. He could prove to be a terrible nuisance for the government.”

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Former prime minister Milos Zeman addressed the media in Prague on Saturday.Credit...Petr David Josek/Associated Press

During the campaign, he came under criticism after his supporters depicted Mr. Schwarzenberg as a foreigner because he had fled communist Czechoslovakia for Austria in 1948.

Mr. Zeman was also attacked by women’s rights advocates when he explained during a televised debate that raping female serfs had conferred an evolutionary advantage on “squires” that his rival Mr. Schwarzenberg, a prince, did not have. Mr. Zeman’s last name means squire in Czech.

While Mr. Zeman is seen as an avid supporter of close ties with the European Union and the United States, he is also perceived as being close to Moscow. In 2010, he suggested that Russia could become a member of the European Union in the next several decades.

Some analysts argue that a 1998 grand coalition agreement between the leftist Mr. Zeman and rightist Mr. Klaus entrenched links between powerful business interests and the main political parties that opened the door to endemic corruption.

Mr. Zeman is regarded as personally incorruptible, a perception solidified in the police surveillance recording of a notorious gangster who was caught complaining in March 2000 that Mr. Zeman could not be bribed, and wanted only “a sandwich, three pickles and for people to like him.”

Yet his sharp tongue has attracted controversy. When he was prime minister, he drew fire for comparing the Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat to Hitler. He has also heaped scorn on journalists, in the past labeling them “manure” and “hyenas.”

He has shrugged off criticism for his tendency to speak his mind, noting on occasion that his role model, Winston Churchill, had a much harsher vocabulary than his.

Mr. Zeman, who led a minority government when he was prime minister, has long been a presence on the Czech political scene. He gained prominence in August 1989 when, during the dying days of Communist Czechoslovakia, he wrote a strident article blasting the failure of the Communist economic system.

He had joined the Communist Party during the 1968 Prague Spring, a short-lived blossoming of freedom that was smashed by the invasion of Czechoslovakia by roughly 750,000 Warsaw Pact troops. Two years later he was kicked out of the party and lost his job as an economics professor, forcing him to make a living working for a sporting federation.

After the fall of Communism in 1989, he joined the Social Democratic Party, becoming its leader in 1993, and, five years later, prime minister.

After he failed to win the presidency in 2003, a contest won by Mr. Klaus, he retreated from politics to his dacha in the Czech countryside. But he was soon back meting out advice, delivered on camera in worn sweaters.

Zdenek Janek, 66, a retired construction worker from Zabcice, in South Moravia, said he voted for Mr. Zeman because he was a straight talker. “He is a reasonable man who understands economics, talks to the point and is a man of action.”

Mr. Zeman will take up his new role in March.

Hana de Goeij contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 4 of the New York edition with the headline: Former Prime Minister Is Elected President of Czech Republic. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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