Halla Tomasdottir is about to be the second lady to function Iceland’s president.
Reykjavik:
Businesswoman Halla Tomasdottir was on Sunday declared the winner of Iceland’s presidential election, last outcomes confirmed, beating former prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir whom critics stated was too political for the put up.
Jakobsdottir conceded defeat early on Sunday and congratulated Tomasdottir, the CEO of The B Staff, a world non-profit co-founded by UK enterprise tycoon Richard Branson to advertise enterprise practices targeted on humanity and the local weather.
Iceland’s president holds a largely ceremonial place within the parliamentary republic, performing as a guarantor of the structure and nationwide unity.
She or he does nonetheless have the facility to veto laws or submit it to a referendum.
Tomasdottir, 55, received 34.3 % of votes, forward of 48-year-old Jakobsdottir, who garnered 25.5 % after stepping down as prime minister of a left-right authorities in April to run in Saturday’s election.
Tomasdottir, who got here second in an earlier bid for the presidency in 2016, obtained a lot broader assist than opinion polls had prompt within the run-up to this 12 months’s vote, spurting within the last days of the marketing campaign after working neck-and-neck with Jakobsdottir.
Jakobsdottir conceded defeat already within the early hours of Sunday, earlier than the final votes have been counted.
“It appears to me that Halla Tomasdottir is rapidly heading in direction of changing into the subsequent president of Iceland.
“I congratulate her on that and know that she will likely be an excellent president,” Jakobsdottir instructed nationwide broadcaster RUV at an election evening rally.
Second lady president
Tomasdottir was to make a televised deal with to the nation afterward Sunday. Throughout her election rally within the early hours of Sunday, she instructed day by day Morgunbladid was “simply making an attempt to breathe”.
“I really feel extremely good. I do know it is not over till it is over. So I am additionally simply making an attempt to remain calm and breathe,” she stated.
Tomasdottir can also be the founding father of Audur Capital, an funding agency created in 2007 geared toward selling female values within the monetary sector.
Nobody central challenge dominated the marketing campaign, the place candidates historically run as independents with out social gathering affiliations.
Within the nation of 380,000 folks, any citizen gathering 1,500 signatures can run for workplace.
Whereas Jakobsdottir was at occasions seen because the favorite, political observers had prompt that her background as prime minister might weigh towards her.
Among the many different important candidates within the area of 13 have been a political science professor, a comic, and an Arctic and vitality scholar.
Tomasdottir is about to be the second lady to function Iceland’s president.
In 1980, Vigdis Finnbogadottir turned the world’s first lady democratically elected as head of state.
Tomasdottir will take over the place on August 1, succeeding the vastly widespread Gudni Johannesson, who has held the job since 2016.
He introduced earlier this 12 months that he wouldn’t search re-election.
Jakobsdottir, social gathering chief for the Left Inexperienced Motion from 2013 till her presidential bid, has been hailed for her dealing with of the resurgence in volcanic eruptions on the Reykjanes peninsula since December.
The 5 eruptions, together with one final week, have sparked a sequence of evacuations in addition to the state’s acquisition of houses from residents evacuated from the threatened fishing city of Grindavik.
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