Janša for the fourth time among Slovenians

(ideje.hr)

On Sunday evening, March 22, the mood in the camp of the Freedom Movement party, which has ruled Slovenia for the past four years, was at its peak. Its president, Robert Golob, became the first politician since Janez Drnovšek to win parliamentary elections twice in a row. “You voted for democracy. We all deserve a future. We will do everything to make the future better for all citizens,” Golob announced. It was an evening when it seemed that the SDS and its leader, Janez Janša, who had led in opinion polls for more than three years, had suffered perhaps their biggest political defeat ever. Just a few days earlier, it had been revealed that the Israeli paraintelligence agency Black Cube, also known as the “private Mossad,” had been meddling in Slovenia’s elections.

What was it about? Black Cube operatives posted video clips of former ministers, lawyers and directors on a website registered in Iceland, which were supposed to prove - as the SDS said - how deeply corrupt Golob's Slovenia was. But these recordings stopped appearing after it became clear that Janša had been meeting with Black Cube's chief advisor Gior Eiland, a retired Israeli general. Golob seized the political moment, accused Janša of high treason and a few days before the election took over the leadership, which he held until election Sunday.

Today, a good two months later, everything is different. Golob is spending his last days in government offices, and the SDS and Janez Janša are coming to power - for the fourth time in the last 22 years. If we add to that his mandate as the powerful Minister of Defense in the 1990s, this will be his fifth time determining the fate of Slovenia. What has happened in these two months? Many broken promises and agreements that seemed impossible before the election. But let's go one by one.

THE VOTERS TOLD THEM: "DEAL WITH IT"

The last parliamentary elections in Slovenia were the most tense in this century. The Freedom Movement (GS) finished ahead of the SDS by just 10.000 votes. To put that into perspective: that is roughly the population of an average Slovenian municipality. Seven parties entered parliament: three each from the left and right, and Resni.ca. This party is populist and anti-systemic, and is led by Zoran Stevanović, who does not hide his sympathies for Vladimir Putin and Aleksandar Vučić. At first glance, it was clear that voters had made post-election agreements as difficult as possible for their chosen ones. The three right-wing parties (SDS, New Slovenia, Democrats) won a total of 43 representatives, while the three left-wing parties (GS, Social Democrats, Levica) won 40. No group alone had the 46 votes that would have secured a majority in parliament and thus a smooth election of a prime minister. There were two options on the table. The first was Golob's new government in a 2+2 combination, composed of two parties from the left and the right: GS, SD, NSi and Democrats. This option was loudly supported and lobbied for in the days after the election by businessmen and capital representatives, who wanted a politically balanced government without the Left party and without Janša. This would probably be in the spirit of the voters' message, which in a period of the greatest political polarization in Slovenia's history could be interpreted as: "Left and right, come to an agreement!"

CIRCLES, CROSSINGS AND DOTS ON BALLOTS

Another possibility was that Resni.ca would be given the keys to forming a new government coalition. But here too, a problem already seen in Croatia arose: with whom could Stevanović come to an agreement if he emphasized throughout the campaign that he was a fighter against the "left-right regime" that governs Slovenia and repeated that he was not interested in participating in governments led by Janša or Golob? Moreover, Stevanović proved that he would never cooperate with the SDS with a signed statement that he certified back in 2021 after the police detained him as the leader of an anti-Covid protest during Janša's third government.

However, it soon became clear that Stevanović's statement was just a dead letter on paper, and that he himself was in collusion with the party against which he led the 2021 popular uprising. This was already evident on April 10, when the leader of Resni.ca managed to become the speaker of parliament with the votes of right-wing parties, the second person in the country after the President of the Republic, Nataša Pirc Musar. He was elected in a very unusual way. In Slovenia, the speaker of parliament is elected secretly, but the ballots that were put into the box by the NSi, Democrat and Resni.ca representatives were marked so that it could be checked whether the secret agreement was being respected: some with circles, others with dots, and still others with crosses. The new partners did not trust each other too much at that time, but it soon became clear that Resni.ca had committed to signing Janša's candidacy for prime minister in exchange for Stevanović's election. Attention, we are still talking about the same Resni.ca that had committed to never cooperating with the SDS.

EVERYONE SAID THEY WOULDN'T GO WITH JANŠA. NOW THEY'RE WITH HIM

In the end, Janša received the votes of 51 MPs as Prime Minister. In addition to the SDS, NSi, Democrats, Resni.cu and representatives of the Hungarian and Italian minorities, he was even supported in a secret ballot by someone from the GS-SD-Left bloc. Janez Janša's victory was complete. While there was speculation for weeks about which of the Democrats' MPs might defect to the opposing bloc, in the end Janša "stole" one vote from his opponents. By the way, the leader of the Democrats, Anže Logar, also announced several times before the election that "we will not go" to a government led by Janša, because Janša "had his chance". Now Logar, for many years one of the leading members of the SDS, will lead the Ministry of Economy in Janša's fourth government.

The epilogue of this festival of broken promises is a government that is officially a minority government, even if it is not. It consists of ministers from three parties, and the majority in parliament is provided by Resni.ca. It continues to declare itself as part of the opposition, although it has a speaker of the National Assembly. The ruling coalition has practically always had its own person in that position. At the same time, Resni.ca, together with the SDS, also proposed the establishment of a commission to investigate the Black Cube affair in parliament. Of course, not an investigation into the Israelis and their Slovenian helpers, but into the police and the Slovenian Intelligence Service (SOVA), which are investigating the Israelis.

THE MOST RIGHT-WING GOVERNMENT IN THE HISTORY OF SLOVENIA

What will the new Janša government be like? After a period when it was ruled by what is probably the most left-wing government in history, Slovenia will now move strongly to the right. The new government will be extremely ideological and conflictual, and its key people are already “Trump-like” in their public appearances. They make no secret of the fact that their goal is to erase everything that the Golob government left behind. Cuts in the public sector, strengthening of private healthcare, measures in favor of big capital, the abolition of the current long-term care system paid for by a special contribution, deregulation of the system, especially in the area of ​​spatial legislation, and attacks on non-governmental organizations, which were the main opponents of the third Janša government, are expected.

Janša has surrounded himself with loyalists in a government in which the SDS will have about half of the ministers. Like Benjamin Netanyahu or Viktor Orban, he has appointed his longtime lawyer Franci Matoz as interior minister. The new education minister, Borut Rončević, who owns several private colleges, is announcing an “ideologically neutral school.” The new foreign minister, Tone Kajzer, was once recalled from his position as Slovenian ambassador to the United States because he photographed a confidential cable and sent it to Janša, who published it.

Janša's government is not just announcing a "revolution": it has already begun its work even before it formally came to power. Last month, the new parliamentary majority adopted the so-called emergency development law, which aims to cut taxes for the richest Slovenians in one fell swoop and repeal key parts of the Golob government's health reform, which restricted the work of doctors from public hospitals in private clinics. This is opposed by the opposition and the unions, who, fearing the loss of almost a billion euros from the budget, health and pension funds, are collecting signatures for a referendum. After 21 years, Janša is back in the trenches with an old enemy. In 2005, in the first year of his first government, it was the unions that managed to undermine the introduction of a flat tax rate and other liberal economic measures through protests. If the Constitutional Court allows the referendum to be held, it will form a key political front this fall, along with local elections. Slovenia faces turbulent months ahead, and the political landscape will become even more polarized, but it is clear that Janša's government has a firm grip on power.