The liberal party of outgoing Slovenian Prime Minister Robert Golob narrowly beat the party of former pro-Trump chief executive Janez Jansa in today’s Slovenian legislature, according to an exit poll.
Golob’s Freedom Movement (GS) received 29.9% of the vote, while Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) collected 27.5%, indicates the survey carried out by private television channel POP TV.
Long in the polls, Golob, 59, has closed the gap in recent weeks thanks to popular measures such as pension increases and a mandatory Christmas bonus, but also due to the international context, which provided him with a broad platform of support.
The war in Iran offered left-wing parties “a great stage for criticism”, while Jansa’s close ties with the President of the United States, Donald Trump, forced him to remain in the background, according to the editor of the Sunday supplement of the Delo newspaper, Ali Zerdin.
Based on the initial numbers and possible coalitions, neither of the two appears, however, to be in a position to win an absolute majority. of the 90 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Drzavni Zborde.
Jansa, who repeatedly stated during the campaign that he wanted a comfortable majority, reacted immediately by declaring that he would not attempt to form a Government if these results were confirmed.
“Whoever wants change has to wait for the final results”, he stated, at his campaign headquarters.
A close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, 67-year-old Janez Jansa has led a campaign centered on a return to “Slovenian values”, including those from the “traditional family”, and promised to “close the tap” of public funds to certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
In his third term, between 2020 and 2022, Jansa repeatedly came into conflict with the European Union (EU) and tried to silence the media that were critical of his governance, fueling accusations of an illiberal drift.
His management of the Covid-19 pandemic, considered authoritarian, brought tens of thousands of people onto the streets in protest and resulted in the landslide victory of Golob, then a newcomer to politics.
At the head of a center-left coalition, this former executive of a state-owned company in the energy sector implemented a program focused on social inclusion, legalizing, among other measures, marriage and adoption by same-sex couples in the country of 2.1 million inhabitants, belonging to the former Yugoslavia and which has been a member of the European Union (EU) since 2004.
“For those who love Slovenia under the sun of freedom, the choice is very clear,” Golob declared in a televised debate held on Friday night.
At the international level, Robert Golob vehemently criticized Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine – one of the only points in common with Jansa -, the United States’ ambitions over Greenland, an autonomous territory belonging to Denmark, and recognized the State of Palestine.
The final stretch of the campaign was marked by the Black Cube scandal, the name of a private Israeli information company suspected of being behind the online release of footage of conversations between a lobbyist, a lawyer and a former SDS minister.
These recordings suggest acts of corruption within the outgoing Government and the alleged purpose of their release was to influence the election in Jansa’s favor, undermining confidence in the outgoing Prime Minister, Robert Golob.
Jansa admitted to having met with one of Black Cube’s executives, but denied any involvement in the release of the videos.
Under Golob, Slovenia became one of the few EU countries to classify Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip as “a genocide”.
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