AKIPRESS.COM - President of the Czech Republic Milos Zeman won the second term on Saturday.

His opponent, Jiri Drahos, 68, offered a firm commitment not just to the country’s membership in the European Union, but also to the bloc’s values. In rejecting his vision, the country was poised to continue in the same euroskeptic direction as its neighbors Hungary, Poland and Slovakia.

In recent years, Mr. Zeman, 73, has strengthened the country’s ties with Russia and has courted China.

With more than 99 percent of the votes counted, the state-owned Czech News Agency declared Mr. Zeman the winner with 51.4 percent of the votes (or 2.8 million), compared with Mr. Drahos’s 48.6 percent (2.7 million).