NICOLA Sturgeon has been re-elected as the First Minister of Scotland.
In a vote that was considered largely ceremonial, Sturgeon won more votes than the combined total cast for her challengers.
Scottish LibDem Willie Rennie had thrown his hat into the ring in a move that was largely viewed as a light-hearted skit rather than a serious challenge.
The Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, who was elected to Holyrood on May 6 from the Highlands and Islands regional list, had also announced he would be in the running.
The SNP leader won 64 votes to Ross's 31 and Rennie's four. There were 28 abstentions.
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The Scottish Parliament's new Presiding Officer, Alison Johnstone, opened the First Minister vote just after 2pm, asking each of the three nominees to speak for up to five minutes outlining their case.
Willie Rennie said he wanted Scotland to be a country that did not blame its problems on its neighbours, in a thinly veiled jab at the SNP’s grievances with Westminster policy.
The Scottish LibDem leader said that as no single party had a majority in Holyrood there should not be any suppositions about who the first minister will be.
However, he said that he stood for the role with a liberal “dose of realism”.
Rennie attacked both the SNP and the Tories in his short speech, accusing the parties of running election campaigns based on “fear”.
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He said there was an important lesson for the Conservatives in the election, and urged them to reach out to undecided voters. Rennie praised himself and Scottish Labour’s Anas Sarwar, claiming they had done so despite both of their parties losing seats.
Rennie hit out at Tory policy globally and internally. However, the Scottish LibDem leader said he refused to walk away from the UK because of the Conservatives.
Ross began his speech telling of his dreams as a child, saying he had always hoped to be a dairy farmer.
He then said he understood it was more likely for a "cow to jump over the moon" than for him to become first minister today, but said that doesn’t mean he shouldn’t try.
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The Tory leader called on the new Scottish Parliament to rise to the challenges of the years ahead and used the opportunity to outline some of the bills his party hopes to bring before it in the coming months.
Ross cited his children and said that he hoped that by the end of the current session of parliament all the MSPs there would be able to look back with pride.
Sturgeon began her speech by thanking the two challengers, but took a more jovial tone than the previous party leaders had in their speeches.
She said Ross had had a dramatic change of heart, not having expressed any will to be first minister during the election campaign.
The SNP leader also said she would like to have a drop of Rennie’s self-confidence, putting himself forward for first minister despite having led his party through an election that saw them drop from five MSPs to just four.
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Taking a more serious tone, Sturgeon addressed the Covid and climate crises and said that the coming year would be “crucial”.
She said Scotland must imagine about the kind of society it wants to be as it recovers from the coronavirus crisis.
Sturgeon said she believed there was broad agreement in Scotland that people wanted a more welcoming and economically secure society that deals on an equal footing with its friends and neighbours.
The SNP leader said she was ready, with the confidence of parliament, to lead Scotland to “brighter and to better times”.
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