The covers and editorials from leading weeklies of the Left and Right for the work-week ending Friday, 2 October 2020. All our stories about coronavirus and Slovenia are here
Mladina: The way to a new govt
STA, 2 October 2020 - The left-leaning magazine Mladina argues in the latest editorial that the only way to stop Slovenia being turned into a "little Hungary" is to find a non-partisan candidate for PM and a merger between several current coalition and opposition parties.
The editor-in-chief Grega Repovž lambastes the opposition for its response to calls this week to close its ranks and establish whether it is capable before the election to stop "Slovenia's being turned into a little Hungary with one leader and one party and its satellites, with limited media freedom, party-run economy etc.".
He finds it ludicrous that former PM Marjan Šarec should have offered himself as a candidate considering that he had blown his chances as PM by "stupidly" resigning, after showing himself as a bad leader.
Repovž goes on to say that the prospects for Šarec's LMŠ party are not promising, as are not for the Left and its leader Luka Mesec, who lost credibility in voters' eyes when it parted their ways with the Šarec-led coalition.
Voters blame the Left and the LMŠ for bringing PM Janez Janša to power, and "the arrival of something new", i.e. a new party, will be destructive for both, writes Repovž, adding: "And this new something will arrive."
He goes on to say that SocDem leader Tanja Fajon neither has the political power nor skills to be PM and does not appear to be capable of strengthening her party.
For anything to change, it has to be in the Modern Centre Party (SMC) and Pensioners' Party (DeSUS), Repovž says, adding that while DeSUS might survive, the SMC has no future as an independent party, while both parties know they cannot recover as long as they continue in coalition with PM Janez Janša.
"The only serious chance for a potential attempt to form a coalition is a candidate for PM who does not belong to any of the parties and is a powerful enough personality (a former publicly esteemed politician) on the one hand, and a process to form a new political party within the current parliament on the other."
Repovž proposes a merger between the SMC, SAB and DeSUS and possibly another party, saying that the whole proposition seems unlikely but is the only way out of the current situation, while anything else is hopeless.
Reporter: Scenarios for a new government
STA, 28 September 2020 - The right-wing weekly Reporter looks at potential scenarios that could lead to a new government in the latest editorial, saying that unless the Janez Janša government gets a vote of no confidence by the end of the year or by the end of the winter, the third Janša's government will be firmly in the saddle until the next election in the spring of 2020.
Janša is back in power not so much thanks to the voters of the Democrats (SDS), who gave the party the most votes in the June 2018 election, but primarily thanks to Marjan Šarec, who resigned as prime minister at the end of January and his coalition partners, who denied him support, starting with the Left.
And now this left-leaning lot is working on creating a new government, editor-in-chief Silvester Šurla says. They say that they could agree on at least five key projects but the problem is they cannot agree on who would be the new prime minister.
Former PM Alena Bratušek has sensed the opportunity to return to power and could offer to be a compromise solution, as Šarec and SocDem leader Tanja Fajon have publicly clashed, both wanting the post.
Šarec's argument is that his LMŠ party still has the most votes among left parties, while Fajon claims it would be ridiculous if Šarec became prime minister again, given that he had resigned from the post.
However, the LMŠ, SD, SAB and the Left have only 39 votes in the 90-member parliament, so they would have to get at least seven votes from the coalition Pensioners' Party (DeSUS) and Modern Centre Party (SMC) for their no-confidence motion to succeed.
After Aleksandra Pivec resigned as DeSUS head the chances of at least four of its MPs changing sides are a little bit bigger. But in that case at least three SMC MPs would also be required. Some say that even SMC head Zdravko Počivalšek could change sides.
But these are nothing but political calculations. In the 30-year-history of independent Slovenia, the country has never had three governments in a single term and the left has never been so fragmented, Šurla says.
Perhaps, everything is merely a show for voters of left-leaning parties. So that their leaders could say that they did what they could to beat Janša but failed. "Taking on the responsibility and rule in these difficult times of the epidemic and multi-billion gap in the state budget is no walk in the park."
Only the SD has a relatively stable election base, while the LMŠ, Left and SAB do not, so their interest is primarily political survival. Hence their selfishness and political calculations. The joint interests of the left bloc come second to them. Being a veteran politician Janša knows that very well, Šurla says under the title Mission Impossible, Part III.
All our posts in this series are here
