The president of Slovakia has accepted the resignation of long-serving prime minister Robert Fico after he was forced to step down by a furore over the murder of an investigative journalist.

But the departure of the embattled Mr Fico will not assuage the anger of many ordinary Slovaks, who have turned out in their tens of thousands in the past two weeks to protest against the killing of Jan Kuciak.

The 27-year-old reporter had been investigating cronyism, corruption and the government’s alleged links to organised crime.

Mr Fico, who has dominated Slovak politics for more than a decade, had offered to resign only on the condition that his party, Smer-SD, be allowed to choose his successor.

That demand was acceded to by Andrej Kiska, the president, who said the mandate to form a new government would go to deputy prime minister Peter Pellegrini, an economist of Italian origins who is a member of the same party as the outgoing prime minister.