By: Dr Metod Berlec
On Tuesday, the National Electoral Commission rejected the SDS objection regarding the conduct of the elections to the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia and confirmed the record establishing the election results of the 22 March vote. And this despite the fact that the irregularities were obvious, and despite the fact that even a former member of the NEC and professor at the Faculty of Law of the University of Ljubljana, Dr Marko Kambič, publicly provided a legal explanation of why the organisation of early polling stations outside electoral districts was unlawful, and warned that the electoral authorities had knowingly acted in contradiction with the legislation.
According to him, the National Electoral Commission placed itself above the legislator, which raises the question of responsibility and the necessity of serious systemic changes. In addition, many Slovenians around the world did not receive their voting materials on time, or did not receive them at all. And those who were deprived of their voting rights were above all those who, in the view of observers, would have marked centre‑right parties on their ballots.
The president of the Freedom Movement and of the government, Robert Golob, continued his performance for the public and behaved as if the ruling coalition in the National Assembly had retained an absolute majority of votes. But the balance of power is now anything but that. The outgoing ruling coalition (GS, SD and Levica) fell from 53 seats to 40, that is, 13 fewer. The outgoing ruling coalition is six votes short of an absolute majority. Both the president of the Democrats, Anže Logar, and the president of Resni.ca, Zoran Stevanović, pulled the brake. They assessed that Golob was offering only superficial negotiations without serious substantive proposals for a coalition agreement. Because the two potential partners did not rush to join Golob’s public performance, pressure from regime‑aligned media began to mount against them, attempting to discipline them. At the same time, rumours began to spread that the ruling left‑wing bloc would try to strengthen its ranks through mafia‑style methods, through bribery. But this could backfire on the transitional left. It is already burdened with accusations of corruption, further reinforced by recently published wiretaps as well as Bojan Požar’s book Gospod Nateg and the Robertina Phenomenon, which describes the influence of various networks on the functioning of Golob’s government, especially the influence of Zoran Janković, who is increasingly becoming a symbol of systemic corruption, arrogance, and coercion.
Well, in recent days Golob’s team has circulated a draft coalition agreement, which is only a slightly modified version of the existing coalition agreement. A continuation of the wrong path. A scam squared. All this has led to the announcement of the Great Anti‑Corruption Protest, which will take place on Friday, when the new convocation of the National Assembly meets for the first time. According to observers, that very day will show in which direction Slovenia will turn: whether it will continue on a path that critics describe as a deepening of corruption, or whether a serious reckoning will begin with the networks, with the corrupt post‑communist structure that has, quite literally, captured this country and shamelessly exploits it for its own enrichment.