Previous FM Anže Logar to run for president in autumn election

Ljubljana – Previous Foreign Minister Anže Logar announced on Monday he will run for president in the autumn election. He has the support of his party, the opposition Democrats (SDS).

“After careful consideration, after talking to people I respect, I have decided to run for president of the republic. I will run through the signatures of citizens, and I also have the support of the SDS party,” said Logar, who believes that this support, which still needs to be formally approved by the party’s council, will further elevate his election campaign.

He is the second candidate to enter the presidential race with the support of a political party after Marta Kos, the vice-president of the ruling Freedom Movement, joined the increasingly expanding list of candidates.

In the current situation, marked by many challenges such as security threats and the cost of living crisis, Logar considers the position of president to be the most important post that can help present and unite different views and bring consensus and unity into the political arena.

“The president is the only official who has majority support and thus majority legitimacy to try to reconcile different views in a direction that is good for the citizens of Slovenia.”

Slovenian society is unfortunately very divided, and challenges ahead call for cooperation of all stakeholders, he said at a press conference, noting that if elected, he would be a very active president seeking cooperation and consensus and calling regular monthly meetings of senior officials.

The SDS MP said it was time Slovenia did a mentality and political leap and elected a president that comes from the right-wing, something that has not yet happened in the country’s 30 plus-year history. The 46-year-old highlighted the benefits of him being open to different views and being a member of a younger generation.

“I like talking to people and in this way shaping inclusive politics from the bottom up,” Logar said, adding that what he set out to do, he then carried out.

Commenting on the incumbent President Borut Pahor, he said that Pahor had taken an important step in the context of efforts to unite Slovenians. As president Logar would further pursue and step up these efforts.

“The war in Ukraine is a black-and-white matter and […] Slovenia needs to stay on the right side of history,” he noted, adding that as president he would continue to co-shape Slovenia’s foreign policy, an area that he is very passionate about and familiar with as former foreign minister.

Logar announced his bid under a linden tree that was planted to honour Slovenia’s independence, and which, he said, is growing a little slower than it could. “But it is the tree that unites us all.”

He decided to run at a time of post-April election developments when the new Robert Golob government ordered a review of all civil service appointments in the past two years and when some ambassadorial appointments were being questioned. “Let’s cooperate, let’s not negate everything that was good in the past just because someone else did it,” he urged.

Logar served as the head of the Government Communications Office in the first two governments of Janez Janša, and was the spokesperson of the first Slovenian EU presidency in 2008. He was an SDS MP already in 2014-2018, and in the 2018 election he unsuccessfully ran for Ljubljana mayor.

He graduated from the Ljubljana School of Economics and Business, and earned his PhD from the Nova Gorica School of Advanced Social Studies.

Other candidates to announce their bids to run for president in the coming election are so far the above-mentioned Kos, prominent lawyer Nataša Pirc Musar, psychoanalyst Nina Krajnik, Kočevje Mayor Vladimir Prebilič and musician Gregor Bezenšek.

Other parliamentary parties, especially the coalition SocDems, are also expected to announce their candidates.

The post Previous FM Anže Logar to run for president in autumn election appeared first on Slovenia Times.