Slovenia's former senior UN diplomat Danilo Tuerk will challenge top-runner, former Prime Minister Lojze Peterle in the country's runoff presidential election on Nov. 11, official results showed Tuesday.
The official and final results of the first round election confirmed that Tuerk would make it into the runoff, having narrowly defeated Mitja Gaspari, former central bank governor, by less than 4,000 votes, Slovenia's National Electoral Commission said.
Peterle, running with the endorsement of the center-right coalition parties, won the election's first round on Oct. 21 with 283,412 votes (28.73 percent). Tuerk, who has the backing of most of the center-left opposition parties, was second with 241,349 votes (24.47 percent).
Both fell far short of the 50 percent support required for an outright victory for the five-year presidential term of office.
Electoral registers included 1.72 million Slovenian citizens eligible for voting. In the first round, 992,245 voters cast their votes, while turnout was lower at 57.67 percent in comparison with the three previous presidential elections.
The results reflected the tight battle to replace Janez Drnovsek, who decided not to run for a second term after holding top state posts for 15 years -- as prime minister from 1992 to 2002 and then as president.
The vote comes two months before this former Yugoslav country, which joined the European Union and NATO in 2004, takes over the half-year rotating EU presidency.
Peterle, 59, said on Tuesday he would not change the strategy of moderate discourse and the desire to unite creative forces that earned him the victory in the first round.
"Polarization cannot prepare us for the right answers to challenges ahead of us," said Peterle, who served as Slovenia's prime minister from 1990 to 1992, the period when the country was gaining independence from the Yugoslav federation.
Tuerk, 55, was Slovenia's ambassador to the United Nations from 1992 to 2000, when he became an assistant to then UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
Tuerk told a press conference on Tuesday that he planned to use the second phase of the campaign to give voters a clearer picture of his plans as president.
Commenting on surveys which suggest a clear win for him in the run-off, Tuerk said he did not feel like a winner, but like a candidate who wants to tell, persuade and explain to the voters that it is extremely important that they vote in the run-off.
Peterle rejected the surveys predication, saying that polls steer rather than reflect public opinion.
Source: Xinhua
|
Comment
Tell A Friend
Print Format
Save Article