Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico has stepped down | Stephanie Lecocq/EPA Slovak PM Robert Fico resigns Deputy Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini asked to form a new government.

Slovakia's Prime Minister Robert Fico officially resigned Thursday, less than three weeks after the murder of an investigative reporter and his fiancée shocked the nation.

President Andrej Kiska formally accepted the resignation of the 53-year-old social democrat-turned-populist, who ran the Slovak government for 10 of the past 12 years. Kiska asked Deputy Prime Minister Peter Pellegrini, a member of the outgoing premier’s Smer-SD party, to form a new government.

According to the website of the Denník N daily, Fico told Kiska: “You can relax. I’m not going anywhere. I intend to be an active head of my party.” During the recent crisis, Fico had accused the president of working with financier George Soros to destabilize the government.

The end of Fico’s often controversial term in office comes after Ján Kuciak and Martina Kušnírová were killed in late February, which led to massive countrywide street protests and the revelation that two people in the government had ties to an Italian with links to the Calabrian crime syndicate known as the ’Ndrangheta.

The murders of Kuciak and Kušnírová are widely presumed to be connected to articles the 27-year-old journalist was writing about the growing presence of the ’Ndrangheta in Slovakia and their possible influence on the government.

Seven people with suspected mafia ties were taken into custody after the killings, but they were quickly released.

Fico announced his decision to step down late Wednesday, two days after the Most-Hid party, a member of his four-party ruling coalition, demanded that he either order a government reshuffle or call early elections.

Pavol Babos, a political scientist at Bratislava’s Comenius University, said there were several reasons why Fico chose to resign and thereby keep the coalition in power. One was pressure from the estimated 50,000 demonstrators who packed the main square of the capital Bratislava last Friday and demanded that he step down.

Another was an opinion poll by the Focus agency for Denník N, which showed that Smer-SD’s popularity was slumping, down to 20.2 percent from the 28.2 percent of the vote it received in the 2016 general election. Babos said internal party polling was believed to paint an even blacker picture "that showed that this coalition wouldn't be able to form a government again."

Trust in Fico has also fallen sharply, with only 11.8 percent of respondents saying they trusted him, the Focus poll found.

“It’s clear that the events of the past two weeks have had a significant impact on Robert Fico’s trustworthiness,” Focus chief Martin Slosiarik told Denník N.

The public pressure on the government is unlikely to end with Fico’s resignation. The leaders of civic groups who organized the earlier street protests were quoted by Slovak media as saying they would continue to hold demonstrations until an election is called.