DEAR READER,

This week we are focusing on Slovenia, where Janez Janša is returning to the post of prime minister. This will be his fourth time leading the Slovenian government. After his defeat in 2022, the consensus was that Janša would never return to the halls of government. Evidently, that will not be the case. For deeper insight into what Janša’s return means, check out the article by Nikodem Szczygłowski in our expert opinion section, which has also been published by New Eastern Europe.

Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!

— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor

Janez Janša is returning to the post of prime minister. This will be his fourth time leading the Slovenian government. After his defeat in 2022, when voters decisively ousted his COVID-era coalition, the consensus was that Janša would never return to the halls of government. However, that will not be the case.

“The National Assembly has just taken an important step toward ensuring greater success for Slovenia in the future. However, this was not the final step toward Slovenia gaining a government of development,” said Janez Janša immediately after a secret ballot on Friday in the Slovenian parliament. This led to him being elected as the country’s new prime minister by a vote of 51 to 36.

Will this end the government crisis in Slovenia, where, two months after the March elections, there is still no government, and Robert Golob’s attempt to form a centre-left coalition has failed?

Janez Janša hopes that in the coming days, or within two weeks at the latest, Slovenia will finally have “a complete team that will work toward a bright future for Slovenia”. As he stated, his SDS party has “some experience regarding how coalitions function from previous governments”, and talks on the distribution of posts will begin, according to him, as early as next Monday, on May 25th.

The politician reiterated that the opposition will be offered a draft partnership agreement for development. Their decision will determine whether this will be a term “in which we seek common ground for the good of Slovenia, or whether they will simply attack and exclude us, just as they did when they were in power”. Janša hopes that this time “it will be different,” though he said they are “ready for anything”.

Janša – who will turn 68 in September – was elected prime minister in a secret ballot with 51 votes, meaning he received three more votes than the size of his coalition: the SDS, the bloc of Christian Democratic parties such as NSi, SLS, Fokus, and the Democrats led by his former colleague Anže Logar. This group also has the support of the opposition Resnica (Truth) party, whose leader Zoran Stevanović had already been elected speaker of parliament. Janša himself firmly rejects allegations of vote-buying, expressing concern that this might be a matter of “some sort of inter-party-political manoeuvring”. In his view, “it is likely a matter of common sense within these parties or parliamentary groups as well.”

According to the rules of procedure of the National Assembly, after being elected prime minister, Janša has 15 days to submit a list of ministerial candidates to parliament. In accordance with an amendment to the Government Act, which was supported in late April by MPs from the SDS, NSi, SLS, Fokus, Democrats, and Resnica, the new government will have 14 ministries.

Janez Janša will head the Slovenian government for the fourth time. Barring some extraordinary surprise, this is a reality with which Slovenians will have to come to terms. This will be a difficult experience for both a significant portion of the country’s polarized society and the political scene. This is especially true given the circumstances of the SDS’s electoral defeat in the spring 2022 elections, which was brought about by mass protests against Janša’s government.

The manner in which Janša has now returned to power is already facing sharp criticism from the left and centre of the Slovenian political scene, both within the parties moving into opposition and among opinion leaders. Numerous commentators accuse the parties of the new centre-right coalition of building a government based on deceiving voters. These accusations are directed primarily at Anže Logar’s Democrats and Zoran Stevanović’s Resnica. These political formations and their leaders, in the view of some voters, have falsely suggested they would not join a government with Janša. Logar – a former party colleague of Janša and foreign minister in his previous government – repeated on multiple occasions while forming his own party, Demokrati, that he had little in common with Janša, thereby attempting to draw more moderate and intellectual right-wing voters away from the SDS. Stevanović – a populist who rose to prominence on the political scene in part thanks to mass protests against the SDS and Janša’s governments, leading anti-vaccine and anti-establishment movements – even signed a notarized statement during the election campaign declaring he would never join another Janez Janša government.

However, from a political standpoint, Janez Janša simply did what any politician aiming to form a government at any cost would do. Left-wing parties will first have to admit that this politician, who has held various roles in Slovenian politics since the very beginning of Slovenia’s independence, has simply once again demonstrated greater political acumen and experience. The decision by Logar’s Democrats and Stevanović’s Resnica, according to commentators, may in turn mean their first and last term in parliament. This assumes, of course, that both parties were not conceived from the outset as parties intended to last longer than a single term.

In any case, it was Logar and Stevanović who primarily made Janša’s return to power possible, which, to be honest, should not come as a great surprise, as many political scientists had predicted such a scenario much earlier.

Janez Janša will begin his new term as head of government in the face of fierce opposition from opposition parties, labour unions, and NGOs – and this, in turn, is a reality with which the ruling right must come to terms.

To find out more, continue reading on New Eastern Europe’s website.

— Nikodem Szczygłowski, reporter, writer and translator from Lithuanian and Slovenian