Nataša Pirc Musar to become Slovenia’s first female president

A liberal lawyer and former data privacy commissioner backed by Slovenia's centre-left government has been elected the country's first female president after beating her conservative rival in a runoff vote on Sunday.

A former journalist and presenter on Slovenia's main news programme, Ljubljana-born Pirc Musar gained additional training at CNN and Salford University's media department before completing a PhD in law at Vienna University. She was elected as Slovenia's commissioner for access to public information in 2004.

She was also hired to protect the interests of Slovenian-born Melania Trump during her husband's US presidency, stopping companies attempting to commercialise products with her name.

During the election campaign much media attention has focused on the lucrative network of companies owned by her and her husband, amid allegations that they had put some of their fortune into tax havens.

In Slovenia's parliamentary system the role of the president is mainly ceremonial. However, Pirc Musar has indicated that she would conduct herself differently to the outgoing president, Borut Pahor, who rarely intervened on domestic political issues during his two five-year terms in office.

The 54-year-old has said that she would like to see Slovenia connect to "core Europe", especially with countries that believe in human rights and constitutional values.