Viktor Orban has lost a new ally in Central Europe. On Sunday April 24, Janez Jansa, the ultra-conservative Slovenian Prime Minister, heavily lost the legislative elections organized in this small Balkan country neighboring Hungary. According to almost final results, Mr. Jansa, 63, obtained only 23.53% of the vote, after two years at the head of this country of 2 million inhabitants during which he multiplied the attacks on the media and justice, on the model of the Hungarian nationalist prime minister. Mr. Orban had also openly supported Mr. Jansa in February.
In his place is a relative newcomer to politics, Robert Golob, 57, who won a victory on a scale never seen since independence in 1991, obtaining 41 of the 90 seats in Parliament. Briefly secretary of state at the turn of the 2000s, this CEO of a prosperous electricity trading company indirectly owned by the state returned to politics in January, after being, according to him, dismissed for political reasons. He had then founded his party, Liberté, bringing together many personalities targeted by Mr. Jansa, and campaigned by promising to fight for a “free and open society” on the basis of a centre-left and ecologist programme.
After a lightning campaign, the rich businessman with long hair thwarted all the predictions of the polls, arriving well ahead of the poll, with nearly 35% of the vote. A signal of the extreme polarization of Slovenian society, participation also reached a record level. “We have a clear mandate to restore freedom”greeted Mr. Golob, thanking the role “civil society” in a video intervention from his home, where he spent the last week of the campaign due to contamination with Covid-19.
Close to Viktor Orban
Hosting the election evening in his place, the executives of his Freedom party promised that this victory should make it possible to rejoin Slovenia to the European Union (EU) after two years of Eurosceptic provocations on the part of Mr. Jansa. “You will never hear of illiberal democracy again [le concept forgé par M. Orban pour décrire son pouvoir autoritaire en Hongrie]. There is only one kind of democracy, and we will restore it”promised the diplomat Marta Kos, approached to become Minister of Foreign Affairs.
For his part, Janez Jansa displayed his face of the bad days, acknowledging his defeat only half-heartedly. “The results are what they are”he only dropped, again questioning “the media”, who “did not warmly describe the results of our work”. A former communist who became a hero of the struggle for independence, Mr. Jansa has been present for thirty years in Slovenian political life. He gradually radicalized to the hard right, and had snatched the post of prime minister at the start of 2020 thanks to divisions in the centrist coalition then in power.
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