The covers and editorials from leading weeklies of the Left and Right for the work-week ending Friday, 9 October 2020. All our stories about coronavirus and Slovenia are here
Mladina: Janša dividing and not uniting people amid epidemic
STA, 9 October 2020 - Mladina's latest editorial says that PM Janez Janša stayed true to himself and launched an attack on Wednesday on the media and opposition as it became clear that his government failed to contain the epidemic. However, Slovenia's ongoing defeat against the epidemic is the result of a poor and incompetent leader, the left-leaning weekly paper asserts.
While Janša accused the media of encouraging violations of protective measures, this is a "dirty lie", Mladina's editor-in-chief Grega Repovž says, arguing there is not a single serious media outlet in Slovenia that would not be calling for respect of measures and spreading knowledge about the epidemic.
Even more, the media, despite being hammered by Janša constantly, have been rather gentle with regard to some major government blunders and the same holds true of the opposition, which never once sank to the level of Janša who threw insults at the previous government as the epidemic began and threatened with lawsuits even though this instilled even more fear in the already frightened public.
"Thus it needs to be stated before his lie spreads: Janez Janša is the one incapable of handling crises, he does not understand what a crisis situation is, which is something that he already showed in 2012 and this merely got confirmed now. It again showed that Janša is without leadership abilities, without organisational abilities and above all completely incapable of uniting the nation in distress," Repovž says under Back to 2020.
"Instead of working, he puts out 30 tweets a day or more and constantly follows developments on this social platform," adds Repovž, who draws hope from the initiative to form a centre-left government as an alternative to Janša, from the discourse accompanying this effort as well as from the demands of the protest movement.
"The stakes are very high. We are in the middle of the epidemic. But in the middle of such a situation, the current government finds it more important to replace the directors of all oversight institutions than to unite the people in the fight against the epidemic. While everybody is taking the epidemic seriously, Janša is only using it."
Reporter: Search for Janša's replacement speeds up
STA, 5 October 2020 - The right-wing weekly magazine Reporter says in its latest commentary that the opposition's search for a new prime minister is gaining steam, with several scenarios being in play behind the scenes on how to get the required 46 votes for a constructive vote of no confidence in Janez Janša.
Janša is pushing his agenda in an uncompromising fashion and is triggering the left-leaning opposition and its political backing to make plans for how to bring down the current government as soon as possible.
Under the headline to the Last Breath and Further, editor-in-chief Silvester Šurla says that a six-month transitional government until a snap election is out of the question, and that only a new political government until the regular 2022 election is an alternative.
But in the latest plans of the "uncles behind the scenes", some of the current parliamentary party leaders taking over at the government is not an option, either, and the path to the 46 votes is gradual.
With the ousting of Aleksandra Pivec as the head of the Pensioners' Party (DeSUS), the DeSUS takeover operation is half-way through, and intensive talks are being conducted with its former leader Karl Erjavec, who is willing to return only under certain conditions.
This would be followed by a merger of DeSUS with the Alenka Bratušek Party (SAB) and Modern Centre Party (SMC), which would together with the MPs of the Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ), Social Democrats (SD) and Left then vote Janša out of office.
The problem is that they still do not have a name for prime minister-designate, who would be a supra-party candidate. Two names have been circulated in the media lately - the former European Commissioner Janez Potočnik and Court of Audit president Tomaž Vesel.
But it is expected that the prime minister, while the opposition is digging him a political grave, will not be idle and that he will do everything he can to keep the current coalition together as long as possible, preparing the grounds for the next election.
"In the tense game of political poker, Janez Janša has better cards in his sleeve compared to the political plotters from the left, but the game nevertheless remains unpredictable," the commentary concludes.
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