An anti-corruption campaigner with no experience of public office has won the first round of Slovakia’s presidential election, as voters spurned the ruling Smer party a year after the murder of an investigative journalist.

Environmental lawyer Zuzana Čaputová won 40.5% of the vote, with 99.4 of the ballots counted on Sunday, far ahead of the Smer candidate, Maroš Šefčovič, who had 18.7%.

The pair will now contest a second-round run-off on 30 March.

The 45-year-old Čaputová, a pro-European liberal who belongs to the small, non-parliamentary Progressive Slovakia party, would stand out among the populist nationalist politicians on the rise across much of Europe.

Slovakia’s president does not wield day-to-day power but has veto power over the appointments of senior prosecutors and judges, pivotal in the fight against corruption.

“I see a strong call for change in this election following the tragic events last spring and a very strong public reaction,” Čaputová said on Saturday. “We stand at a crossroads between the loss and renewal of public trust, also in terms of Slovakia’s foreign policy orientation.”

The killing in February 2018 of Ján Kuciak, who reported on fraud cases involving politically connected businessmen, triggered the biggest anti-government protests in Slovakia since communism ended three decades earlier. It also led to the resignation of then-prime minister and Smer leader Robert Fico.

Fico’s government remains in power, but Smer’s popularity has slumped. On the first anniversary of Kuciak’s murder, thousands of Slovaks rallied to protest against what they see as a lack of government action on the corruption he uncovered.

The murder of Kuciak and his fiancee is still under investigation. The biggest breakthrough to date came just two days before the vote, when special prosecutors said they had charged businessman Marián Kočner, a subject of Kuciak’s reporting , with ordering the murder.