By Álvaro Peñas
In the second round of the French elections, in which the sovereignist Marine Le Pen and the globalist Emmanuel Macron are competing, other, equally important elections went unnoticed. This is the case for the Slovenian parliamentary elections, which take place today, Sunday. The elections will be contested by the incumbent conservative Prime Minister Janez Janša and his “eco-liberal” opponent Robert Golob, and 1.7 million Slovenians will vote for 88 MPs and two representatives of the Italian and Hungarian minorities.
To the delight of Brussels, which has condemned Slovenia for its alleged lack of the rule of law, these elections could spell defeat for the conservative prime minister and his SDS party, a defeat which, according to Europa Press, will be a severe blow for Central European populism. Janša’s good political and personal relations with Viktor Orbán – both were committed anti-communist fighters – and his support for the Visegrad Group has made him the focus of attention of the media and European ‘progressives’, making him an ‘authoritarian’ and ‘populist’ leader. Unlike Orbán, SDS remains a member of the European People’s Party.
At the time of the invasion of Ukraine, Janša advocated sanctions against Russia and traveled by train to the Ukrainian capital with the Prime Ministers of Poland, Mateusz Morawiecki, and the Czech Republic, Petr Fiala, to meet with Zelensky while Russian troops were trying to surround it. A symbol of his unequivocal support for the Ukrainian cause. At the end of February, Janša warned at a press conference that the fall of Ukraine would have a domino effect: “Moldova and Georgia will be next, the Baltic states will probably follow, and in the Balkans, things will start to boil.” The Slovenian Prime Minister did not specify what he was referring to, although there are more and more voices pointing to problems in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The invasion was also condemned by opposition candidate Robert Golob, although his vice-president Marta Kos is strongly opposed to sending arms to Ukraine and is in favour of dialogue with Moscow. Golob spent 16 years as head of the Slovenian energy company GEN-I and gained political experience as vice-president of the now-defunct political party Positive Slovenia, which was led by the current mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković. Janković received the Order of Friendship from Vladimir Putin for his efforts to commemorate fallen Soviet soldiers in Slovenia.
Golob’s party, the Svoboda Movement, was founded in January this year and promises to “restore Western European values and the rule of law”, the same discourse as the failed Hungarian opposition, and describes itself as a “green and liberal party”. As expected, he was enthusiastically supported by the media and Brussels. The published opinion polls show a technical tie between Janša and Golob, so it seems to be all in the hands of the undecided.
Sara Kovač on Nova24tv reported yesterday that an NGO linked to Golob’s party is offering free taxi rides to mobilise the party’s voters in its Ljubljana stronghold. Dejan Jefim, a businessman with close ties to Serbia, Russia, and Janković, is financing these free taxi rides. Jefim is a former regional director of the Russian multinational Yandex, but according to his own words he no longer works for Yandex, although this claim cannot be independently verified. Jefim is also the owner of an IT company that has an 80% market share of IT equipment for taxi services in Slovenia. Interestingly, he is also the president of the Slovenian taxi drivers’ union.
After the fall of Babis in the Czech Republic, Janša could be the next “populist” to fall. His case is a good example of how different authorities can achieve the same goal. A “green-liberal” government will bring Slovenia under the feet of Brussels, and if Janša wins a fourth term, the patriotic bloc in Central Europe will be greatly strengthened.
Source: El Correo de España