By: Dr Matevž Tomšič
A little over a month after the election, nothing is as it seemed then. Or, to be precise, as it seemed to the one who was the relative winner of the election. If at that time he was full of confidence and announced the continuation of his government’s term, he has now “thrown in the towel” (much like one of his predecessors). Deeply offended, he withdrew from forming a coalition. He ended up looking like a child furious because his peers do not want to play with him.
What is happening now is something we have seen before. Robert Golob has “repeated the move” of his political mentor, the mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković. Let us recall: in 2011, Janković, with his newly founded party Positive Slovenia, unexpectedly won a relative victory in the parliamentary elections (with a small lead over the Slovenian Democratic Party). However, he was unable to form a government afterwards, as he did not gather enough support in parliament. Some parties simply did not want to enter a coalition under his leadership.
Now the same is happening to Golob, and for very similar reasons. With his showmanship, arrogance, and scheming, he managed to alienate all the non‑left parties that entered parliament. After a narrow relative victory (achieved amid numerous irregularities and suspicions of abuses, naturally to the benefit of the left‑wing bloc), he apparently expected that potential coalition partners would simply “run into his arms”. Without him needing to offer them anything concrete. What he sent them as a draft coalition agreement did not deserve that name, as it was merely a kind of list of platitudes written on two pages. He intended to continue the programme of the previous strongly left‑leaning government. He expected that parties with entirely different political programmes would agree to this. Apparently, mere participation in his government was supposed to be a great honour for them.
But of course, that did not happen. It quickly became clear that none of the potential partners outside the circle of the outgoing coalition were willing to sell themselves for crumbs. Even pressure from the mainstream media sympathetic to Golob had little effect. Therefore, already during the election of the president of parliament, an ad hoc coalition emerged that indicates the outlines of the future government. The new president of the legislative body, the leader of the party Resni.ca, Zoran Stevanović, was elected with the votes of all parties that were not part of the outgoing government. And Resni.ca, without which, it seems, no government can be formed, made it clear that the right is programmatically closer to them than the left.
As expected, this development triggered an outburst of intense outrage on the left, which escalated into full‑blown hysteria. Left‑wing politicians and their media and civil‑society allies began “pouring buckets of slander” on those who decided to align with the opposite bloc. The new president of parliament was especially targeted, turning overnight into a symbol of everything bad. The outgoing prime minister labelled the newly formed political alignment a “coalition of fraudsters” that “will not last long”.
Here we may ask: who exactly is supposed to have deceived Golob and his people? The Slovenian Democratic Party? He did not invite them to cooperate at all. The trio around New Slovenia? They immediately stated they would not enter a coalition with him. The Democrats? They said they would not be in a government together with Levica – which Golob kept insisting on including. Resni.ca? They said they would not enter a government with either Janša or Golob, and they likewise rejected cooperation with Levica. None of them can therefore be accused of acting without principles. The failure to form a new government coalition can be attributed by Golob only to himself, to his self‑importance and his lack of respect for potential partners, against whom he preferred to scheme rather than establish an equal dialogue. And perhaps to his patrons, who convinced him he was something he was not.