By: Dr Metod Berlec
The most likely presidential candidates are on the cover of this issue of Demokracija magazine. Who will actually be the candidate for the position of President of the Republic will be known after September 28th, when the deadline for filing candidacies expires. If a few weeks ago it seemed that everything had already been decided, it is clear now that this is not the case at all. After the resignation of Marta Kos from the presidential candidacy, it initially seemed that the path to victory in the presidential elections was open for Nataša Pirc Musar in the fall. But the transition-tycoon backpack that she has together with her husband Aleš Musar, and the affairs in which she gets involved practically on a daily basis, are turning her into an increasingly unreliable candidate for the highest office in the country. Therefore, it is not a surprise if the transition left began to push the new presidential candidate forward in the media, i.e., SD MEP Milan Brglez.
Last week, everything indicated that in addition to the SD, he would be supported by the entire ruling coalition, but it became complicated, as the Gibanje Svoboda party’s council decided that the party would actively participate in the presidential race, causing to support an independent candidate in the first round. Of course, that is not Brglez. In recent days, the Levica party was deciding between Brglez, Matej Tašner Vatovec, and Miha Kordiš. The latter won, who will thus demagogically roar with his far-left rhetoric at the presidential confrontation. In recent days, it was interesting to observe how left -wing media and their activist journalists in their articles and comments pressured Robert Golob for his Gibanje Svoboda to support Brglez. As if to get the instructions of the last boss of the Party Milan Kučan from Murgle that they should support him.
The former was described as a man without principles, a hypocrite with strong personal ambitions, who is very calculating and only sees his own interests by the former Prime Minister Miro Cerar and his partner in the SMC (Cerar was the president, and Brglez the vice-president). As a man who, with his extreme ideological views, is close to the Levica party. Kučan himself distanced himself somewhat from Pirc Musar and is now ready to support Ivo Vajgl or Brglez, who are said to have similar views as him.
An interesting survey was conducted last week by the left-wing agency Ninamedia for the newspaper Dnevnik and Večer. Among the six candidates who received the highest support among respondents in the last two surveys, 34.1 percent of respondents would choose Anže Logar, or 3.9 percentage points more than in August, and 31.4 percent would choose Pirc Musar, which compared to the August survey is also 3.9 percentage points more. 5.4 percent would vote for Ivo Vajgl, 3.5 percent for Vladimir Prebilič, 2 percent for Janez Cigler Kralj, and 0.3 percent for Gregor Bezenšek Jr. Among the respondents, 1.7 percent would not choose any of the above, 1.6 percent said they would not vote, and 17.6 percent said they did not know who they would vote for.
If there was a chance to choose between Logar and Pirc Musar in the second round, Logar would be chosen by 42.1 percent of respondents or 2.4 percentage points more than in August, and Pirc Musar by 41.9 percent of respondents or 4.8 percentage points less than in August. If there was a choice between Logar and Brglez, 51.4 percent would vote for the former, and 25.2 percent for the latter. If there was a choice between Pirc Musar and Brglez, 46.4 percent would vote for Pirc Musar, and 29.7 percent for Brglez. In short, there is a real possibility that a candidate from originally democratic ranks will win the upcoming presidential elections.
However, last week brought at least two more events that should be highlighted and show the non-state-forming, destructiveness, and revanchism of the ruling transitional left. Last Thursday, Golob’s government cancelled the contract for the purchase of modern eight-wheeled boxer armoured vehicles on the grounds that they were too expensive armoured vehicles, but in reality, they cancelled them out of pure revanchism, because the previous government or its defence minister, Matej Tonin, had signed the contract for the purchase. In doing so, they care little that Slovenia will now pay at least 70 million euros in contractual penalties and that the missing modern boxer armoured vehicles should be replaced at some point in the future with used Polish rosmark armoured vehicles, which Poland itself is abandoning. Prime Minister Robert Golob agreed with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz that instead of M55S tanks, which will be sent to Ukraine, Slovenia will receive military trucks. As if we do not already have enough of them! The problem of the Slovenian Army is primarily the lack of modern armoured vehicles and tanks, which would be necessary to create the capabilities of a medium battalion unit. This is the real firepower needed in a potential war.
Well, the government also decided to recall the ambassador in the USA, Tone Kajzer, saying that he allegedly sent an unauthorised message from the ministry to SDS president Janez Janša (in reality, it was a controversial order for official institutions to publicly publish Nataša Pirc Musar’s address and thereby make it easier for her collecting signatures for the presidential candidacy). In order for the order to recall Ambassador Kajzer to come into force, it must be signed by the President of the Republic, Borut Pahor. The first Slovenian foreign minister, Dimitrij Rupel, publicly urged him not to sign it, warning that in Kajzer’s case it is not a controversial but a state-forming act. In addition, the message at issue did not have any classified information. In any case, Golob’s government is playing with Slovenia’s foreign policy reputation, and it may happen that it will also lose its candidacy for a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council for the period 2024-2025. But the rulers do not bother with this. It is important for them to continue dealing with personnel who were or were supposedly close to the previous, centre-right government. And to dance…