ISSN: 2560-1601
Vol. 27, No. 1 (SI)
March 2020
Slovenia political briefing: Slovenian New government Helena Motoh
1052 Budapest Petőfi Sándor utca 11.
+36 1 5858 690 Kiadó: Kína-KKE Intézet Nonprofit Kft. [email protected] Szerkesztésért felelős személy: Chen Xin
Kiadásért felelős személy: Huang Ping china-cee.eu 2017/01
Slovenian New government
Summary
After the resignation of Prime Minister Marjan Šarec in the last days of January resulted in the end of the mandate of the 13th Slovenian government, the negotiations between existing parliament parties resulted in the formation of the new government under the leadership of Janez Janša. The coalition is politically very diverse, and the formation of the government caused a lot of public debate. The government that was sworn in had to start operating immediately due to the present Covid-19 related crisis.
Background: 2018 elections and the end of Šarec government
After a series of disagreements in the coalition, but mostly triggered by a dispute over the financing of the proposed abolishment of the supplementary health insurance system and the resignation of the Minister of finance, Andrej Bertoncelj, Prime Minister Marjan Šarec resigned on Monday, January 27th. Despite some debate about a potential new Prime Minister candidate it was soon clear that this also meant the end of the minority government. The 13th Slovenian government was in itself a compromise achieved following a difficult election result on the 2018 parliamentary elections. After the June 2018 parliamentary elections, the relative winner, Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) was not able to compose a government, mostly due to the previous conflicts between their president, Janez Janša and some other prominent Slovenian Democratic Party members with other political parties and their representatives. Due to the reputation of Slovenian Democratic Party often sympathizing with the extreme right political views, several other parties even entered the election campaign promoting a promise that they will not join a potential Janša-led government. Therefore, the first round of negotiations, led by Janša, were not successful and the second coalition proposal was then put together by Marjan Šarec. He negotiated with the Social Democrats (SD), Pensioners’ Party (DeSUS), Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB) and the New Slovenia party (NSi), but with the New Slovenia Party the differences especially in their views on the financing of private schools, health care reform and income tax proved to be too substantial to be able to achieve a compromise. Šarec then negotiated with The Left, but they eventually decided to support the government from outside
1 and not join the coalition. Šarec was then able to become Prime Minister designate with 52 votes of support and the government was then elected in the parliament on September 13th, 2018.
Formation of the new government
After Marjan Šarec’s resignation, several scenarios were speculated about in media and political circles. What Šarec probably expected to happen when resigning was for snap elections to be called. This scenario was strongly supported by his political party, Marjan Šarec List, but seen as a great risk for smaller parties, which lost a lot of public support since the 2018 elections. Especially the two government partners of Marjan Šarec List could risk a worse result in the potential snap elections. First was the Modern Centre Party, which was going through inner struggles after the change in its leadership from its founder, Miro Cerar, to a more right-wing- leaning Zdravko Počivalšek. The other party which could risk a downward turn in the election results, was the Pensioners’ Party (DeSUS), which had a change of leadership as well and a strong competition for their voting demographic in Alenka Bratušek Party. According to public opinion polls, in snap elections they could both even fail to pass the parliament threshold. The second scenario, a possibility of a technical government also did not result in any concrete negotiations. The third scenario played out eventually, and this was the solution to seek for a new government coalition among the existing parliament parties. The opportunity to do so was given to the relative winner of the 2018 elections, Janez Janša. The obvious first partnership to be sought for was New Slovenia (NSi), due to the similar political profile. Nevertheless, these two parties had a series of conflicts in the past years, especially after attacks by Janša on the previous president of New Slovenia, Ljudmila Novak. With Ljudmila Novak now Member of European Parliament and a new leadership of Matej Tonin, these conflicts were easier overlooked and NSi voted to join the coalition on February 25, at the meaningful absence of Novak. At the same time, two member parties of the previous Šarec coalition, Modern Centre Party and DeSUS also voted to join Janez Janša’s coalition, both only after significant disagreements within the parties and with their membership base. In the light of the growing Covid-19 epidemics, the hearings of ministers with the parliamentary committees, and also the debate and the voting process were shortened, and the government was sworn in on March 13th.
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Coalition agreement
Due to large conceptual divergencies between the political parties of the new coalition, the coalition agreement was designed in very general terms. The main accents, however, were influenced by a very specific priorities of the leading coalition party, the Slovenian Democrats. In health system the agreement addresses the issue of long waiting times for specialist examinations, which are said to be solved by including private practitioners into the public health system, a move that was criticized by the left and left-centre parliament members as a dangerous move in the direction of the privatisation of the public health system. IN addition, instead of trying to abolish the supplementary health insurance which was a key part of the previous government strategy, they announced the reshaping of the supplementary insurance. In economy, the coalition agreement is not very specific, mostly resorting to the need for alleviating the administrative burdens and improved legal protection of investors. Apart from that, specific smaller projects are planned, not unlike the strategies of two previous Janša’s government terms: e-vignette toll system, subsidizing the energy renewal projects, public work system etc. An important part of the economic programme, doubtlessly there due to the demands of Modern Centre Party and its president's priorities, is a national tourism strategy. The part of the coalition agreement where an important impact of DeSUS can be discerned, is the promise to establish a demographic-pension fund and national demography office. Tangible promises in the field of the pension system are the promise to balance the pensions again in 2020 and 2021 in case of the higher economic growth and other raises in pensions. The most radical changes are promised in the defence system, where the coalition agreement plans for a gradual re-instalment of the conscription in the army, a system that was abolished and replaced with a fully professional army when Slovenia joined NATO. A move which is seen by defence specialists as a problematic one especially due to the NATO requirements, was justified in the agreement with the lack of cadre and an increasingly senior structure of the current army. The coalition agreement also emphasizes another important are, which Slovenian Democratic Party has been stressing in the past years, namely, the issue of migrations and asylum legislation.
Ministers in the government
The distribution of the ministries was the key point in the coalition negotiations, with all partners having strong demands in this area. The negotiated distribution of the ministries, however, strongly reflects the relations of power in the new government. Key ministries are mostly reserved for the leading coalition party, with the exception of Ministry of Defence,
3 which was given to Matej Tonin, president of the New Slovenia Party, and Ministry of Economic Development, which was given to Zdravko Počivalšek, president of the Modern Centre Party. Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Culture and Ministry of Environment were all kept by Slovenian Democrats and the ministers were chosen among top party members and/or ministers in Janša’s previous governments. Of the rest, the president of DeSUS, Aleksandra Pivec, kept her position as a Minister of Agriculture. Numerically, the dominance of Slovenian Democrats is also evident, with 7 ministries and the Prime Minister, while Modern Centre Party got 4 ministries, New Slovenia got 3 and DeSUS 2, while the last also being promised the not yet established National Demography Office.
Conclusion
The new government formed after the resignation of Prime Minister Marjan Šarec and the fall of the previous minority government coalition was formed by a relative winner of the previous elections and included two political parties from Šarec’s government. The differences in political programmes and the disagreements within the coalition parties whether to join the new coalition make this new agreement more unstable that it might initially seem with a very general coalition agreement and an expression of common desire for political stability. Swift replacements of previous organs in the government institutions with persons closer to the Social Democratic Party and the measures taken in the demanding situation of the Covid-19 related crisis already started showing the imbalances between the dominant Slovenian Democratic Party and its partners, while also revealing their different political priorities.
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