According to the almost final results released by the Electoral Commission, the outgoing prime minister’s liberal party is in a situation of “technical tie” with Janez Jansa’s party in the legislative elections.
Slovenian Prime Minister, liberal Robert Golob, claimed victory in this Sunday’s legislative elections, winning 29 parliamentary mandates against 28 for the nationalist party of former pro-Trump Prime Minister Janez Jansa.
“It was a close contest. Everyone who voted voted for democracy, not just for the Freedom Party”, declared Robert Golob, in his first speech on election night, adding that he wants to guarantee “a better future for everyone” during his “next term”.
“Now that we have gained the people’s trust, we can look to the future with more freedom,” he assured.
According to the almost final results released by the Electoral Commission, the outgoing prime minister’s liberal party is in a “technical tie” with Janez Jansa’s party in this Sunday’s legislative elections in Slovenia.
Golob’s Movement for Freedom (GS) obtained 28.59% of the votes and Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) 28.09%, after counting 99.74% of the ballot papers, with a very high turnout of almost 69%.
Jansa denounced the existence of technical problems on the Electoral Commission’s website and announced the intention to “recount every vote in all polling stations”.
Another five parties obtained votes that allow them to enter the Slovenian parliament and, in the game of possible alliances, none of the sides seems capable of guaranteeing an absolute majority of 46 out of 90 mandates, with a right-wing bloc that could, however, gather 43 mandates, in contrast to the 40 of the outgoing center-left coalition.
“What seems clear is that the difference will be very small”, commented Uros Esih, journalist for the daily Delo, who believes that the eurosceptic Resnica party, which won five parliamentary seats, could be the balance.
“But governing, regardless of the bloc, with a populist and anti-system party only means problems and instability”, he added, predicting that this Government would have a “short life”.
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 has given him 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.
A close ally of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, 67-year-old Janez Jansa led a campaign focused on a return to “Slovenian values”, including those of the “traditional family”, and promised to “turn off the tap” of public funds to certain non-governmental organizations and nationalize part of the healthcare system.
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, in 2022.
At the head of a center-left coalition, this former executive of a state-owned energy company 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.
Janez Jansa accused him of behaving as if money “grew on trees” and of emptying the state coffers.
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.
During Golob’s term, Slovenia was also one of the few EU countries to classify Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip as “a genocide”.
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 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.
