Janez Janša, the right-wing nationalist prime minister of Slovenia, looks to have lost his bid for re-election to an upstart green-liberal opposition party led by political newcomer Robert Golob, according to preliminary results. Golob’s Freedom Movement garnered 34% of the vote and 40 of the 90 parliamentary mandates after 98% of the votes cast on Sunday were counted, according to the State Election Commission, reports news agency MIA.
That puts the 55-year-old on track to become the EU member country’s next prime minister. Janša’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) had a 24% vote share. At this stage of the counting, it was on track to take 28 seats in the National Assembly. Only three other parties, the conservative New Slovenia, the Social Democrats and the leftist Levica party cleared the 4% hurdle needed for entry into the parliament in Ljubljana.
New Slovenia appeared to have taken eight seats, the Social Democrats eight seats and the leftist party gained five seats. One parliamentary seat each is reserved for representatives of the Italian and Hungarian minorities. If this distribution of seats holds, Golob could form a majority with the Social Democrats.
Janša, on the other hand, would miss out on a majority together with New Slovenia, his traditional coalition partner. Golob spent election day in self-isolation in his home town of Nova Gorica due to a coronavirus infection. He addressed his supporters celebrating the election victory in a club in the capital Ljubljana via video link in the evening.
“People really trust that we are the only ones capable of fulfilling the hope for change,” Golob said. For now, he said, there would be dancing, but on Monday a new day would begin and with it the hard work. An electrical engineer by training, Golob was until recently general director of the state electricity trading company GEN-I. Janša accepted the electoral defeat and declared that his party aimed to be what he called a “state-supporting opposition.”
Janša, 63, is a political veteran and became prime minister of the small Alpine nation in March 2020 after drawing the support of some lawmakers away from the previous centre-left coalition.
Before his third premiership began in 2020, Janša was prime minister from 2004 to 2008 and from 2012 to 2013. Critics say Janša sought to curtail media freedom and pays scant respect to democratic values or the rule of law.
A close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, he is also seen as trying to bring the media and judiciary under his control. Janša began his rise to power when he became defence minister in Slovenia’s first post-communist government in 1990.
He has taken a strong pro-Ukraine stance since Russia’s invasion in February and visited Kiev early on in the war. Nearly 1.7 million people were eligible to vote in the parliamentary elections.
Turnout of 68% was the highest in 22 years.
