A woman president of the Slovenian Republic: Nataša Pirc Musar, TV journalist and lawyer

Slovenia has a female president for the first time.

It is Nataša Pirc Musar, independent candidate, who in today's ballot has established herself on the conservative challenger Anze Logar.

With the ballot almost completed, with the counting of 99.9% of the ballots, Pirc Musar received 53.86% of the votes compared to the 46.14% obtained by Logar, with a turnout that reached 53%, in addition to 10 points more than in the 2017 presidential election.

Pirc Musar

, confirming a thirty-year tradition of center-left presidents.

In today's vote he overtook the conservative candidate and former foreign minister, Anže Logar, the architect of a campaign characterized by moderate tones that allowed him to distance himself from the right-wing leader Janez Janša, but without being able to break through the majority of the electorate who he still considers him too close to the former prime minister, accused by many of illiberal methods of government and contempt for the media. 

Pirc Musar will take over from Borut Pahor, who has reached his second and final mandate, from which he will formally take the helm on 23 December.

54-year-old Ljubljana lawyer, with a twenty-year-old son, Pirc Musar has a ten-year past as a journalist for state public television, during which he led the leading news program of the first channel, and for the private network Pop TV, with work experience and training also on CNN, the BBC and Sky News.

But after a doctorate in law at the University of Vienna, she Pirc Musar decided to devote herself entirely to forensic activity, where

- with a step also as director general of State Television - and to the defense of human rights.

In the past, you have also defended the former American first lady of Slovenian descent, Melania Trump, and is an established lawyer in the Ljubljana bar. 

During the election campaign, Pirc Musar came under accusation from a part of the press for her alleged role in the small business empire built by her husband, guilty, according to some reconstructions, of using tax havens to evade taxes.

From his electoral committee, gathered in Ruska Dača, a family property on the outskirts of Ljubljana which is also a historic building protected as a cultural monument, Nataša Pirc Musar celebrated together with hundreds of activists, guests and journalists he had invited to celebrate what he considered a victory foretold.

"I expect people to recognize the values ​​I stand for as the ones they believe in and the ones they want themselves," she said in her first statement about her.

before adding that Slovenia deserves more and that it is ready to start working tomorrow, because "we have a lot of work ahead of us".

Together with her in the electoral committee also the former president Danilo Turk, while in her weeks another former president, Milan Kučan, had expressed her support.

"Congratulations Nataša Pirc Musar on her election as President of the Republic of Slovenia. As the first woman to be elected President of Slovenia, she paved the way for future generations. I look forward to working with her. We share the goal of a 'Union ever stronger, more democratic and resilient ".

The president of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen writes in a tweet.