Don't you know Slovenia has a new President ?

11 November 2007. I bet not many people knew about this issue :-) Slovenia is a small country and not many people know where it it. So its no surprise if you dont know now they have a new president. I often got a question whenever i mentioned that i live in Slovenia. Same questions ...'where is it? is it Slovakia before they saparated from Cekoslovakia? where is it in map? duh!!!hehehe ... Anyway, this past few weeks local televisions were broadcasting about next election of Slovenian president. There were some debates and campains. The interesting part about the election here is anybody can stand for a president, even a handycap, as long as you get certain signatures from your supporters. And there's one candidate that was a handycap. While in Indonesia, to be a president candidate you must physically healthy, means no handycap allowed. Cause i remember in our UUD 45, there is 1 poin that saying something like 'seorang presiden harus sehat jasmani dan rohani'. Now back to the result of the election, finally Dr Danilo Türk was elected with major voters. Here's a little about his biography that i collected from some sources.

Dr Danilo Türk was born on 19 February 1952 in Maribor, Slovenia. He studied at the Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, where he obtained his law degree (1975). He continued his academic career at the Faculty of Law in Ljubljana where, in December 1982, he became assistant professor, then associate professor (1987) and finally tenured professor of international law (1995)

He served as the first Slovenian Permanent Representative to the United Nations between 1992 and 2000. During this time, he was president of the United Nations Security Council in August 1998 and November 1999. During his term on the Security Council from 1998 to 1999 he dealt with the issues of Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, East Timor, Congo among others.He was subsequently UN Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs from 2000 to 2005. IBetween 2005 and December 2007, when he assumed the office of president, he worked as a professor of international law and dean of student affairs at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana.

In June 2007 he filed as a candidate in the October 2007 Slovenian presidential election. He was backed by the Social Democrats, Zares, and DeSUS and also by the non-parliamentary Christian Socialists and Democrats. In the first round of the presidential elections, held on 21 October 2007, he placed second with 24.54% of the votes, which brought him into the run-off against Lojze Peterle, who received 28.50%. He won the run-off on 11 November 2007 with 68.2% of the votes, and became the third president of Slovenia on December 23, 2007 and was inaugurated in the National Assembly on 22 December 2007.

Pic source : http://www.up-rs.si