July 27, 2018
Mladina: Šarec Has No Political Convictions, But Portugal Offers a Model
Marjan Šarec, the runner-up in the 3 June parliamentary election, does not inspire trust, the left-wing weekly Mladina says in its commentary on Friday, as summarised by the STA. The ease with which he went from forming a neo-liberal government to a modern left-leaning government indicates he has no political convictions.
The magazine says that Šarec may be viewing politics as a personal project of his. "This does not presage anything good. Anything is possible in pragmatism: the best and the worst. It all depends on the balance of powers and the people."
"Should we now hope that Šarec will have good advisors and that everything will be okay? That he will be able to make good decisions based on his intuition?"
"What if he says that he does not have the power to do things differently because of the balance of powers," the magazine wonders under the headline “Pragmatism”.
And yet, the talks launched this week will provide the opportunity for a left government focusing on prosperity and progress for everybody.
Looking at countries where this has been done shows that neo-liberals really find this outrageous. When a left-leaning government was sworn in in Portugal, many warned that the state would collapse and companies would move out.
"But looking at Portugal today, you can see a country with the highest growth rate in Europe. Despite a significant increase in minimum income."
Demokracija: Centre-left Coalition on a Road to Nowhere
Also as summarised by the STA, Demokracija, the right-wing weekly, argues in Thursday's commentary that the quintet of centrist and leftist parties negotiating a coalition led by Marjan Šarec are on a road to nowhere, which the paper defines as a place where chaos is created and castles in the sky built.
"The public's clouded mind accepts promises that they know are not feasible but because of an absence of vision, they internalise them anyway," says Thursday's editorial “Sequence of Events in the Head of Dejan Ž on the Road to Nowhere”.
The paper notes that this is the situation now that Matej Tonin's New Slovenia (NSi) took the sober decision that it would not last in a situation caused by parties that form the outgoing government which are now offering themselves as saviours.
The only option now is to seek help from the Left, but this will only take them "from the Road to Nowhere to the Road to Perdition," the paper says.
"It is clear that the Left's entry into government or its support of a minority government means that [Left leader] Luka Mesec rather than Marjan Šarec will be the true prime minister.
"They appear to be aware of this, hence the attacks on Matej Tonin and the daily lobbying to change his mind after all and grant the wish for a 5+1 coalition that would show it is possible to act outside ideological ditches."
