By: Domen Mezeg / Nova24tv
“This new agreement shows, above all, that firstly, they lack imagination, and secondly, that the programme has absolutely no content. They have no political imagination and no content, that is, no ideas about what to do with Slovenia to continue to help it develop, as it is developing now, under the current government, and they are also not competent enough to pull something like that off,” the socio-political commentator Borut Rončević said about the new agreement of the left-wing opposition regarding the post-election cooperation.
The left-wing opposition has announced that the LMŠ, SD, Levica and SAB parties have agreed on the content of the agreement on cooperation after the parliamentary elections. The leaders of the parties also initialled the content of the document on Friday and are planning to sign it next week. Last month, the president of the LMŠ party, Marjan Šarec, called on the opposition parties and asked them to prepare and sign such an agreement. Šarec proposed a “normalisation” of the state, meaning a formation of a government without the ruling SDS party and the parties that support the latter, in which the prime minister-designate will be determined by the party that receives the most votes in the elections. The leader of the Social Democrats, Tanja Fajon, also said that they intend to add to these points, but that all the parties roughly agree on the joint part of the agreement on cooperation in the post-election period, reports the Slovenian Press Agency.
We asked two socio-political commentators for their opinion on the moves of the left-wing opposition – Sebastjan Jeretič and Borut Rončević. Jeretič explained that so far, the parties have not offered anything besides the typical anti-Janšaism. “Even if they offer some empty content points, this will still not be a programme coalition that is working for something, for some changes in Slovenia. And the other thing is that this move is, mostly, only intended for the outside public. Namely, this is an attempt to give the impression of the unity of these four parties, which will, in fact, be in a fierce race against each other for the votes next year.” Jeretič believes that they will not form a shared list that might achieve a group result but will instead compete with each other. The question, however, is how the real moves in the background, especially ones on the ground, will follow this signing of the agreement. For the very “left-wing public,” this is a move that suggests that it is all a matter of forming a solid ‘block’; however, during the time of Šarec’s government, we saw what the reality was.
Jeretič believes that this is nothing more than a kind of PR move. Šarec is definitely in a hurry because a new face might appear soon. But even if this foursome of left-wing parties stays in the match, given that there is not much difference between them on the outside, as all four are quite radical and exclusively critical of the government of Janez Janša, Jeretič still thinks that in this race of the four, the Levica party shows the most promise, at least regarding the potential it has. Relations between these four parties will lean in the direction of the Levica party as the elections draw closer. “If we were betting on it, I would say today that the Levica party will prevail in this quartet of parties, which means that Luka Mesec would be the mandate candidate of this bloc – provided that there would be no new faces in the elections, of course.” The economy will certainly not support this, but what that actually means for Slovenia is for the people to decide for themselves.
The Constitutional Arch Coalition is not capable of going beyond the anti-Janšaism
Rončević estimates that the Constitutional Arch Coalition quartet has only three points, which are the same as before. “I do not think that these four are capable of anything more than anti-Janšaism. They showed this both when they were in power, and they are still showing it now when they are part of the opposition. Anti-Janšaism will apparently also be a key point of their programme. And I am pretty sure that it is also going to be the key point of their election campaign.” Rončević also believes that in a democratic society, anyone who is capable of work in the eyes of the law can become a prime minister-designate. Slovenia has already had quite a few “interesting” heads of government, from Alenka Bratušek onwards. According to Rončević, this can happen, there is a real possibility of this, but at the same time, it is still too early to make any judgments about it. At this point, it would be very difficult for a new face to appear in a similar style to what happened with Šarec. “In my opinion, the new face that enters politics must be more credible. If we look at the results of the last elections, we can see that this whole thing with the ‘new face’ did not work out for them.”
But, to be fair, Šarec’s results were always extremely poor. He probably had the worst result of all the new faces we have ever seen. It is, however, possible that the left is waiting until the last minute to launch the new face. “This new agreement shows, above all, that firstly, they lack imagination, and secondly, that the programme has absolutely no content. They have no political imagination and no content, that is, no ideas about what to do with Slovenia to continue to help it develop, as it is developing now, under the current government, and they are also not competent enough to pull something like that off,” Rončević said. And regarding the “normalisation” od Slovenia, Šarec has already made it clear in the past what that actually means for him. It is about returning the state of our society to the way it was at the time of his government. He had already said that after returning to power, the left-wing parties would dismiss the people that were put in positions by the Janša government and replace them with their own because when they were still in power, they were doing things the right way and the situation was ‘normal,’ and now “it’s not.”