Lawyer Pirc Musar elected Slovenia's first woman president

LJUBLJANA: Slovenians on Sunday elected Natasa Pirc Musar, a lawyer linked to former US first lady Melania Trump, as the country's first woman president.

Pirc Musar, backed by the centre-left government, beat ex-foreign minister Anze Logar, a veteran of conservative politics, in a presidential run-off in the EU country of two million people. Pirc Musar, who headed the country's data protection authority for a decade, won almost 54 percent of the vote, ahead of Logar who got just over 46 per cent, according to the election commission.

"Slovenia has elected a president who believes in the European Union, in the democratic values on which the EU was founded," she told reporters, adding she would "give all my efforts so that politicians unify on strategic issues".

The human rights advocate has vowed to be "the voice of women" in Slovenia and abroad and a "moral authority" in her new role, which is largely ceremonial.

"The president cannot be neutral... and have no opinion... I have never been afraid to speak out," the former television presenter, 54, told AFP ahead of Sunday's vote.

As a lawyer, Pirc Musar was hired to protect the interests of Slovenian-born Trump during her husband's presidency, stopping companies attempting to commercialise products with her name.

During the campaign, Pirc Musar, who is a keen motorcyclist, came under attack because of her husband's lucrative investments-especially in tax havens.

The results mark a fresh setback for the country's conservatives. Logar, 46, ran as an independent but is a longtime member of the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) 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 law in his latest term in office.