Musar tipped to be Slovenia’s first woman president
Slovenians were voting on Sunday in a run
off poll expected to elect the country’s first woman president - a lawyer linked to former US first lady Melania Trump.
Natasa Pirc Musar, backed by the centre-left government, is running against ex-foreign minister Anze Logar, a veteran of conservative politics, in the EU country of two million.
A lawyer, Pirc Musar was hired to protect the interests of Slovenian-born Trump during her husband’s presidency, stop
ping companies attempting to commercialise products with her name.
She is forecast to win just slightly above 50 per cent of the
vote, ahead of Logar who is due
to get between 44 and 49 per cent, according to the latest polls.
Pirc Musar, who headed the country’s data protection author
ity for a decade, says her victory
would make her ‘the voice of women’ in Slovenia and abroad.
Though the president’s role is largely ceremonial, the human
rights advocate has vowed to be a ‘moral authority’.
“The president cannot be neutral... and have no opinion... I
have never been afraid to speak out,” the former television presenter, 54, told AFP.
Pirc Musar, who is a keen motorcyclist, has come under attack because of her husband’s lucrative investments - especially in tax havens.
Her opponent Logar, 46, also ran as an independent but is a long-time member of the Sloven
ian Democratic Party (SDS) of Janez Jansa, who failed in his bid
to be re-elected as premier in April.
“I entered this campaign to win,” Logar said, casting his ballot in the capital Ljubljana.
Critics accused Jansa of attacking media freedom and the judiciary and undermining the rule of law in his latest term in of
fice. Logar plays the cello and is a keen mountaineer who cycled to the presidential debates.
“It is good if the president represents a different view than the ruling coalition - (it) provides
more balance... which is better for a democratic system,” Logar told AFP ahead of Sunday’s vote.
Newspaper columnist Uros Esih said Pirc Musar has surrounded herself with ‘strong ad
visers’, allowing her to compete with the relatively more experienced Logar. But Logar would
‘more likely be a mere instrument’ of Jansa’s party, Esih said.