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 grow 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 international minister Anze Logar, received 46 p.c, in accordance with election fee knowledge primarily based 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 mentioned at considered one 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 ladies” in Slovenia and overseas and a “ethical authority” in her new position, which is a largely ceremonial put up.
“The president can’t be impartial … and don’t have any opinion,” Pirc Musar, who headed the info 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 along with her title.
Through the marketing campaign, Pirc Musar got here underneath 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 individuals.
Logar, 46, ran as an impartial however is a longtime member of the Slovenian Democratic Social gathering 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 regulation in his newest time period in workplace.
