Preliminary outcomes present liberal lawyer and former TV presenter with eight-point lead over conservative rival.
Natasa Pirc Musar, a liberal lawyer and former TV presenter, is on track to turn out to be Slovenia’s first feminine president after preliminary outcomes confirmed the 54-year-old has received the presidential runoff.
Pirc Musar, backed by the centre-left authorities, received 54 p.c of the votes in Sunday’s runoff whereas her rival, right-wing politician and former overseas minister Anze Logar, received 46 p.c, in response to election fee knowledge based mostly on 77 p.c of the votes counted.
“We have to unify to have the ability to do one thing good for our stunning homeland,” she stated at one in every of her household properties on the outskirts of the capital, Ljubljana. It was crowded with supporters as outcomes began to trickle in.
The human rights advocate has promised to be “the voice of girls” in Slovenia and overseas and a “ethical authority” in her new position, which is a largely ceremonial submit.
“The president can’t be impartial … and haven’t any opinion,” Pirc Musar, who headed the information safety authority for a decade, instructed the AFP information company forward of Sunday’s vote. “… I’ve by no means been afraid to talk out.”
As a lawyer, Pirc Musar was employed to guard the pursuits of Slovenian-born Melania Trump throughout her husband’s US presidency, stopping firms trying to commercialise merchandise together with her title.
In the course of the marketing campaign, Pirc Musar got here beneath assault due to her husband’s profitable investments, particularly in tax havens.
The outcomes mark a recent setback for conservatives in Slovenia, a European Union nation of two million folks.
Logar, 46, ran as an unbiased however is a longtime member of the Slovenian Democratic Celebration of Janez Jansa, who failed in his bid to be re-elected as premier in April.
Critics accused Jansa of attacking media freedom and the judiciary and undermining the rule of legislation in his newest time period in workplace.