ISSN: 2560-1601

Vol. 7, No. 1 (SI)

May 2018

Slovenia Political briefing: Election campaign before June parliamentary elections 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 Election campaign before June parliamentary elections

Short Summary The main development on the Slovenian political scene in May is the campaign before parliamentary elections. Due to several factors the results and the subsequent construction of government are still very difficult to predict. The number of campaigning political parties also contributes to the rather unpredictable political dynamics in the following weeks.

Background Just few months short of the full government 4-years term, on March 14 Prime Minister Miro Cerar announced his resignation due to several insurmountable crises his government was facing at the time. The main issue, according to Cerar's own statement was the complete obstruction of the Act on the building of the Second Track Railroad between Divača and Koper by a repeated referendum. Other serious difficulties were: inability to successfully negotiate with the public sector syndicates, problems with passing the health care reform, conflict with European Commission about the privatization of the biggest Slovenian bank, Nova ljubljanska banka, and tensions between the member parties of the government coalition. After his resignation, pre-term elections were called by President Borut Pahor for June 3rd, only slightly earlier that the elections were due if the government completed its mandate.

Campaign developments Since mid-March a lot of new political developments started to take place, especially on the level of political parties. Most notable of these were: 1) Establishment of new political parties. Several new political parties were formed shortly before elections. Among them were Dobra država (Good state) by a former Modern Centre Party member Bojan Dobovšek;

1 GibanjeSkupajNaprej (Together Forward Movement) by Danijel Bešič Loredan, medical doctor and an outspoken critic of the Minister of Health Kolar Celarc; and Za zdravo družbo (Party for Healthy Society). Most of these do not seem to be able to pass the parliamentary treshhold of 4%. Some of them, however, can still hope to reach the threshold for recompensation of their campaigning expenses (1%). 2) Changes within the preexisting political parties. The most notable change was the leadership replacement in the NSi (New Slovenia Party), Catholic right-wing party, which replaced its long-term president Ljudmila Novak with a younger Matej Tonin, a move which was also seen as a reflection of a shift of the inter-party dynamics. Novak was strongly opposed to any alliance with the leading right-wing party, Slovenian Democrats of Janez Janša, while Tonin expressed less firm political positions on this topic. 3) Revival of pre-existing political movements. Several previously active political parties and movements became more active. Among these were the Solidarnost party, which was born in the protest movement of 2013; Pirate Party etc. Two other older non-parliamentary parties also became significantly more active before elections, namely the extreme-right Slovenian National Party (SNS) of Zmago Jelinčič and the conservative Slovenian People's Party (SLS), led by Marko Zidanšek. As of now, none of these seems to be able to cross the parliamentary threshold, but as is true for the new political parties their main contribution in the election campaign will probably be that they bring several very specific topics into the debate. 4) New alliances between political parties. Many new alliances were formed between preexisting smaller movements and parties. Andrej Čuš, former Slovenian Democrats' member and founding member of the Forward Slovenia movement, took over his father's position of the president of Slovenian Green Party, while also joining several other smaller movements, including his own Forward Slovenia, into a pre-election alliance (renamed into »Andrej Čuš and Slovenian Green Party«). United Left-Democratic Work Party, former part of

2 the United Left coalition, joined with a former Social Democrats' member Janko Veber's movement SLOGA (Unity). On the extreme right side of the spectrum, United Right was formed from the Voice for Families and Children Party and New Slovenian People's Party. An alliance of a different type was also formed between the Pensioners' Party DeSUS of Karel Erjavec and the Positive Slovenia Party of Ljubljana mayor, Zoran Janković. Although Positive Slovenia is not participating in the elections, the support extended by Janković was interpreted as an attempt to bring DeSUS, a former member of both right- and - left governments, closer to the left side of political spectrum.

Candidate lists By May 3rd, the deadline for the submission of the lists of candidates, 25 political parties submitted their lists, 22 of them in all of the eight election units. The rather large number of participating political parties is not a novelty, although it was smaller in the past few elections, the same number of political parties competed at the first parliamentary elections after independence, which took place in 1992. In the eligibility checking procedure few of the proposed candidate lists encountered difficulties. United Left-Sloga, Andrej Čuš and the Slovenian Green Party, Social Democrats, Slovenian Nation Party and United Right Party were all sanctioned for irregularities in their candidate lists. United Right Party failed to meet the gender quota having too few women candidates in one of the election units. On the other hand, United Left-Sloga party failed to meet the quota of men candidates. The candidate list of the Slovenian Nation Party included a candidate who passed away a year ago. The lists of Social Democrats and Green Party were also under close supervision for having both presented an identical candidate, which was interpreted by both as an unfortunate error, which was legally corrected by ascribing the candidate in question to the list of Social Democrats, where she was reported first.

Main profiling topics in the election campaign

3 Under the influence of the recent year developments and the current government's last few months, the election campaign mostly focuses on these topics:  Poverty and social status of the poorest social groups, especially working poor and the elderly.  Political responsibility for corruption cases, out of which dubious financial transactions and economic decisions are most often exposed. Most notable cases debated extensively in the campaign are the building of thermal power plant unit TEŠ 6 and the financing of political campaign.  The selling-off of the New Bank of Ljubljana (NLB) according to the agreement with European Commission.  The implementation of the Arbitration Court decision for the demarcation of borders between Slovenia and Croatia.  The role of Slovenia and new alliances within EU and in the world.

Analyses and predictions According to the public opinion polls, conducted between May 12 and May 22, the leading party seems to be Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) with 14,7 percent (slightly falling), followed by the political party Marjan Šarec List at 9,8 percent (slightly rising). The third place is most likely to be taken by Social Democrats with 4,9 percent or by the winner of the 2014 elections, the Modern Centre Party at 4,7 percent. The Left got 4 percent support while New Slovenia (NSi) has got 3,8 percent support. The Pensioners' Party (DeSUS), also part of the previous government coalition only has 3,7 percent support. Alenka Bratušek Party got 3,1 percent and Slovenian National Party 3 percent of votes. A high 38 percent are still undecided or do not intend to vote, which is rather consistent with the data from the previous 2014 elections where almost a half of the voters decided on their preferences in the last week before elections.

4 Summary The large number of competing political parties and the fragmented political scene of traditional political parties, newly established parties and new alliances make the outcomes of the 2018 parliamentary elections very unpredictable. A high number of the yet undecided voters can shift the pre- election predictions considerably, also combined with the so-called tactical voting in either of the two blocks. Furthermore, the fragmentation of the left wing on the one hand and the predominance of one right-wing party on the other will most probably cause a very difficult construction of the government regardless of the precise election outcomes.

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