Robert Golob, 57, won 41 from the 90 seats in the Parliament. “A clear mandate to restore freedom,” he said, after the attacks on justice and the media of his ultra-conservative and Eurosceptic predecessor.
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Viktor Orban has lost a new ally in Central Europe. Sunday, April 24, Janez Jansa, the ultra -conservative Slovenian Prime Minister, lost heavily the legislative elections organized in this small country of the Balkans neighboring Hungary. According to almost final results, Mr. Jansa, 63, only obtained 23.53 % of the votes, after two years at the head of this country of 2 million inhabitants during which he multiplied the attacks against the media And justice, on the model of the Hungarian nationalist Prime Minister. Mr. Orban had also openly supported Mr. Jansa in February.
In its place, it is a relative newcomer to politics, Robert Golob, 57, who won a victory of a magnitude never seen since independence, in 1991, obtaining 41 of the 90 seats of the Parliament. Brief Secretary of State at the turn of the 2000s, this CEO of a prosperous business of electricity trading belonging indirectly to the State had returned to politics in January, after having been dismissed for political reasons. He had then founded his party, freedom, bringing together many personalities targeted by Mr. Jansa, and campaigned by promising to fight for a “free and open society” on the basis of a center-left and ecologist program.
After a shedding campaign, the rich businessman wearing long hair has foiled all the predictions of the surveys, largely arriving at the top of the ballot, with almost 35 % of the votes. Signal of the extreme polarization of Slovenian company, participation has also reached a record level. “We have a clear mandate to restore freedom,” praised Mr. Golob, thanking the role of “civil society” in a video intervention from his home, where he spent the last week of the campaign due to contamination at COVID-19.
close to Viktor Orban
Animating the electoral evening in his place, the executives of his Liberté party promised that this victory should allow Slovenia to the European Union (EU) after two years of Eurosceptic provocations on the part of Mr. Jansa. “You will never hear about illiberal democracy again [the concept forged by Mr. Orban to describe its authoritarian power in Hungary]. There is only one kind of democracy, and we will restore it,” promised Diplomat Marta Kos, expected to become Minister of Foreign Affairs.
For his part, Janez Jansa displayed her mine for bad days, recognizing his defeat only with the tips of lips. “The results are what they are,” he said only, by questioning “the media” again, which “did not warmly describe the results of our work”. Former communist who has become a hero of the struggle for independence, Mr. Jansa has been present for thirty years in Slovenian political life. He gradually radicalized to the hard right, and had torn off the post of Prime Minister in early 2020 thanks to divisions of the centrist coalition then in power.
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