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"Given that nobody had the courage to take this step in the first round, the five parties will file the nomination in the second round," Šarec told the press after hours of talks between the quintet of centrist and leftist parties and the Left about the latter's support for a Šarec cabinet.
He believes it is right to "cut the Gordian knot that has been suspended over us the entire summer and take this step". "Those who will endorse this government will show they are serious and those who will not will show that they had no serious intentions," he added.
Šarec, whose Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ) heads the five parties encompassing also the Social Democrats (SD), Modern Centre Party (SMC), Pensioners' Party (DeSUS) and the Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB), expects the National Assembly to hold a session to appoint him prime minister-designate on Monday.
At today's meeting, the quintet and the Left discussed the details of an agreement on project-specific cooperation in exchange for the Left's support for the Šarec government.
According to Šarec, the agreement still has to be hammered out, but "none of these documents are such that they would not allow the steps I have mentioned."
However, the Left's Luka Mesec said after the talks that document was not harmonised and that the party wanted clear commitments about the contents and the form of cooperation before backing Šarec as PM-designate.
According to Mesec, the five parties rejected the Left's proposal for cooperation and put forward their own. This will be discussed today by the Left's executive council and talks with the other parties are to continue tomorrow, Mesec added.
The party moreover wants to get "clear commitments that the coalition agreement would not be changed significantly" after they back Šarec.
Mesec added that the Left was unimpressed with the way the quintet had decided to put forward Židan as parliamentary speaker without telling them before telling the press. He would not comment on Židan's nomination itself.
"While things have been constructive and in cooperative spirit so far, certain tendencies displayed by the coalition partners today worry us," said Mesec.
On the other hand, Šarec remains optimistic about the cooperation agreement, but has noted that if the agreement with the Left is not signed, there will be no government.
Commenting on the proposal that he become speaker, Židan said that this was not a condition of the SD to enter the coalition, although it is a tradition that the job goes to the second-largest party in the coalition.
New Slovenia (NSi), whose president Matej Tonin was appointed interim speaker to allow the passage of some key legislation soon after the election, said it would "not comment before action is taken and candidacies are filed".
