By: Spletni časopis
Following the request by MPs from Svoboda, SD, and Levica to postpone next week’s vote on the new prime minister, Janez Janša, due to their appeal to the Constitutional Court over the election results, a group of political activists from left‑wing parties, led by former minister Dušan Keber and joined by Svetlana Makarovič and Slavoj Žižek, has also demanded that the Constitutional Court immediately annul the elections and return 53 seats to Svoboda, SD, and Levica in order to preserve Robert Golob’s government.
In parliament, Zoran Stevanović’s college rejected the manoeuvre to postpone the vote on electing Janša as the new prime minister, and the vote will take place on Friday.
Since the election, Svoboda, SD, and Levica have only 40 MPs left. They lost the election. Under the legal framework, they could have appealed the election results during the confirmation of mandates in the new parliament, but at that time they were still celebrating their “magnificent victory”, having convinced themselves, and most of the media, of it. Immediately after the election, journalists were asking Janez Janša when he would resign because of his “defeat”, yet no one ever asked that question of anyone in the defeated coalition. Had they challenged the fairness of the election during the confirmation of mandates, they could have filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court within eight days, but that deadline expired long ago. It appears that the governing parties are counting on the Constitutional Court judges, most of whom they themselves appointed and who are ideologically aligned with the left, to ignore the rules that define their work and jurisdiction.
The parties that have governed until now have invented a new deadline for the Constitutional Court, one that was publicly proposed in Delo by Rok Lampe, a former failed candidate of Zoran Janković’s Positive Slovenia, whom Delo presents as a law professor while omitting his political background. Lampe claimed that 22 May is the deadline for a constitutional appeal that can be filed by anyone, a political party, an NGO, or any individual who believes that foreign interference prevented a democratic electoral process. Lampe does not cite where such a deadline is defined. It does not appear in any law. There were unlawful foreign influences during the campaign, but in favour of the governing parties: foreign‑funded NGOs, such as Nika Kovač’s 8 March, even with the help of a foreign national, an Israeli citizen, clearly influenced the outcome in favour of Svoboda by insinuating that Janez Janša was behind the publication of recordings exposing corruption in the government. Until the final week before the election, polls showed SDS ahead of Svoboda; after the 8 March campaign financed from abroad and the misuse of SOVA and the government to accuse Janša of treason, the trend reversed, and Svoboda gained a slight lead. But the governing coalition as a whole decisively lost.
Lampe repeats Golob’s accusation against opposition leader Janša in his Delo commentary, claiming it is “undisputed” that Janša ordered the alleged unlawful intelligence activity (the exposure of government corruption). This shows that the text is not written by a serious legal expert, who would normally respect the presumption of innocence. There is no judicial ruling indicating any violation of the law, not even a lawsuit. These are merely Golob’s political accusations without evidence, aimed at preserving power. Janša denies being the commissioner or financier of the recordings exposing corruption within the government, including the published recordings of Vesna Vuković and testimonies in Zagreb, Vienna, and London by former minister Dominika Švarc Pipan, lawyer Nina Zidar Klemenčič, lobbyist and former PR adviser to Miro Cerar Rok Hodej, key GEN director Dejan Paravan, Tomislav Vukmanović, and former DARS supervisory board chair Jožef Oberstar, all describing abuses of power, corruption, and payments to media and NGOs.
The coordinated action of the outgoing governing parties is further shown by yesterday’s statement from the Secretariat of the National Security Council, which announced that a foreign forensic laboratory had found that the published recordings of corrupt government behaviour were incomplete. This is news only to people living on the moon. Even an amateur can immediately hear that not everything recorded was published. The Secretariat called on the police and prosecution to continue the investigation, not into corruption, but into finding the culprits who published recordings that were supposed to remain hidden. The purpose of the Secretariat’s public intervention, both in the past and yesterday, was propaganda in favour of Robert Golob. For the National Security Council, which is about to be replaced once the new government is elected and Janša takes over, this is quite an embarrassment.
Lampe has already instructed the Constitutional Court in Delo that it must treat the left‑wing activists’ appeal as a priority, suspend the formation of the new government, annul the election results, and invalidate all acts adopted on the basis of the election, thereby reinstating the previous MPs and ensuring Robert Golob remains in power.
And if Golob loses the repeat election, they will likely try again.
According to several media reports (list via N1), the signatories of this proposal to the Constitutional Court are: Bojana Leskovar, Rudi Rizman, Sanja Fidler, Leon Magdalenc, Blaž Rozman, Vesna Vuk Godina, Svetlana Makarovič, Renata Salecl, Spomenka Hribar, Janez Markeš, Svetlana Slapšak, Matjaž Hanžek, Vlado Miheljak, Slavko Splichal, Hajdeja Iglič, Vinko Möderndorfer, Darko Štrajn, Polona Jamnik, Boris A. Novak, Matej Šurc, Janez Jančar, Dragan Petrovec, Niko Toš, Bogomir Kovač, Dušan Plut, Boris Vezjak, Tamara Lah, Božo Repe, and Slavoj Žižek.