Slovenia elected this Sunday as president a renowned lawyer new to politics, Natasa Pirc Musar, the first woman to lead the alpine country. The 54-year-old independent candidate met close to 54% of voting intentions, according to the results published by the Electoral Commission.
She clearly distances herself from her conservative rival Anze Logar (46%), former Minister of Foreign Affairs and winner of the first round on October 23.
“You are paving the way for future generations”
“My first action will be to invite all the leaders of the political parties to the presidential palace,” he declared on Sunday night in front of hundreds of supporters gathered in the capital, Ljubljana. And after the Jansa-era tensions with Brussels, he insisted on his confidence “in the European Union and in the democratic values on which it was founded.”
The president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, immediately hailed the victory. “As the first woman elected to the presidency, you are paving the way for future generations,” she tweeted.
During the campaign, Natasa Pirc Musar, who describes herself as a “liberal”, stressed her desire to give more substance to this essentially ceremonial position.
“The president cannot be neutral, he must have an opinion”, be “a moral authority”, he stressed in the intermission. “I’ve never been afraid to speak up,” she said.
“A difficult campaign”
A former TV presenter, Natasa Pirc Musar made a name for herself running the Slovenian Data Protection Authority in the 2000s. A tireless advocate for the political class, she opened her law firm in 2016, regularly reviewing television sets as an expert.
Passionate about motorcycles, she has been the target of attacks for her husband’s lucrative investment activities, especially in tax havens.
Without the support of an “established party”, he estimated on Sunday that he had lived through “a more difficult campaign” than his rivals, even if the liberal prime minister, Robert Golob, gave him his support after the first round.
“They called me a careerist, you would never say that about a man,” she had lashed out before, wanting to be “the voice of women” in Slovenia and abroad.
Source: BFM TV
