“I congratulate the winner of the election,” the defeated head of government said Sunday night. He hopes Golob will “succeed, form a stable government and assemble a team that works for all of Slovenia”. The current government has established a “stable base” for its successor, according to JanÅ¡a, who has promised constructive opposition work.
The Golob election winner addressed his supporters via a video link due to a corona infection. “Today people dance. Tomorrow is a new day and from tomorrow we will work hard to justify the trust,” said the 55-year-old. In a later appearance, he announced that he wanted to form a government “quickly” and within a month. Slovenia needs a new government immediately. He described the Social Democrats as a possible coalition partner. It is not yet clear which parties will make it to parliament. But it is already clear “who will lead them”.
Golob first entered Slovenian politics in January, taking over a small extra-parliamentary Green Party and renaming it the Freedom Movement. The Janša government has made a significant contribution to this, as it removed Golob as head of the state-owned electricity company Gen-I last fall.
At the EU level, Golob is likely to strengthen the camp of liberal heads of state and government. “I’m glad the liberals won not only in Slovenia today, but also in France,” Golob hailed French President Emmanuel Macron’s election victory in response to an APA question. “I myself am a big supporter of green policy and I believe that climate policy should not be hesitated any longer,” Golob emphasized. “Unfortunately” there is still “some skepticism about us” among the Greens, although they have already received an invitation from the liberals, Golob said when asked which party family the freedom movement would join.
In addition to the liberation movement and the SDS, the Christian Democrat party “New Slovenia” (NSi), the Social Democrats (SD) and the left managed to enter parliament. SD leader Tanja Fajon has already offered herself as a coalition partner for the winner of the election and praised the SD as a “factor of stability” and a “trustworthy choice” for a center-left government.
After counting 99 percent of the votes, the freedom movement had 40 out of 90 terms, the SDS 28, followed by the NSi (eight), SD (seven) and the left (five). Two seats in the Slovenian parliament are reserved for representatives of the Italian and Hungarian communities.
So far, nine parties have been represented in the Slovenian parliament. Janšas SDS won the 2018 elections but was thwarted by a left-liberal five-party minority government. But that only lasted a year. In March 2020, Janša returned and antagonized many Slovenes with authoritarian policies. In the run-up to the elections, civil society also mobilized against Janšand contributed significantly to the fact that the 69.2% turnout was more than 16 percentage points higher than four years ago and reached the highest level in 22 years .
While the left rallied at 4.3 percent, several established parties fell short of the four percent barrier to entering parliament, including former prime minister Marjan Å arec (LMÅ)’s list at 3.7 percent, the co-op -ruling Konkretno with 3.4 percent and also the party of former liberal prime minister Alenka BratuÅ¡ek (SAB), which was also contested by former NEOS deputy Angelika Mlinar (2.6%). It even trailed behind the anti-corona party Resni.ca (2.9%). The Democratic Pensioners Party (DeSUS), which has consistently won over most left and right governments for more than two decades, scored just 0.64%. The nationalist Slovenian National Party (SNS) also clearly lost re-entry with 1.5 percent.
Political experts also interpreted the result as a defeat for the anti-JanÅ¡a opposition bloc. The four left and liberal parties that met in parliament to form the “Coalition of the Constitutional Arch” (KUL) had to lose their sentences, leaving only the SD and the left in parliament.
However, KUL bosses were satisfied with the election result. “Today we are on the winning side. There is a shared sense of relief that we have achieved our goal of changing the government,” said SD leader Fajon. “After a two-year nightmare, this government is leaving. This is the biggest success today,” said former prime minister Å arec. “The Hungarian experiment in Slovenia is over,” said Linke boss Luka Mesec. Because of the poor election result, he announced that he wanted to offer his resignation to the party committees.
JanÅ¡a was evasive when asked if he was considering resigning. In this sense, “a long line of those who have lost all their terms or half of their terms” is ahead of her, she said. The 63-year-old political veteran has led the conservative SDS with an iron fist since 1993 and has gone through several ups and downs, culminating in a several-week prison sentence just before the 2014 election on a corruption conviction. He was prime minister three times, from 2004 to 2008, from 2012 to 2013 and since 2020.
During the current term, Janša not only caused outrage with attacks on the media and the judiciary, but also with her congratulations after the false electoral victory of US President Donald Trump in 2020. In the dispute over the rule of law with Hungary and Poland, he compared the European Union to communist Yugoslavia. However, he has received praise for the Slovenian presidency of the Council of the EU in the second half of 2021. Recently, he has also scored internationally by clearly falling behind Ukraine and even traveling with his colleagues from Poland and the Czech Republic for a solidarity visit to Kiev mid-2021. March.