A Pacifist Beats Jansa

The results of the Slovenian parliamentary and presidential elections on the whole confirmed the predictions and analyses of the public. Drnovsek's Liberal Democratic Party won a landslide victory with 23.32%; it was followed by Peterle's Christian Democrats with 14.53%, the left-wing Combined List with 13.64%, Jelincic's Slovenian National Party with 9.88%, the Slovenian People's Party with 8.77%, Bavcar's and Rupel's Democrats with 5.04%, the Greens with 3.70% and the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia with 3.32%. Regarding the presidential elections, the present Slovenian president Milan Kucan had a clear win over the Christian Democrat candidate Ivan Bizjak (who won 21.2%) and the other six candidates from other parties (who gained negligible numbers of votes).

Around ten in the evening of December 6 the feverish announcing of the first unofficial results began. It quickly became clear that they would be quite uncomfortable for the representatives of some of the best known "constituent" parties.

While in his headquarters Milan Kucan was cutting the celebration cake, the president of the Democrats Igor Bavcar glumly spoke to reporters. Rajko Pirnat, until recently Minister of Justice in Peterle's government and now president of the right wing People's Democratic Party (which was kicked out of the Parliament), seemed despondent, while the elusive Joze Pucnik, once the inviolable leader of DEMOS (Slovenian Democratic Coalition) interviewed, for more than an hour, an unfortunate journalist who had dared to approach him... It was interesting to watch the media wary Janez Jansa march up and down the hall, managing to avoid all but a few journalists looking for a short statement. A Slovenian state television journalist succeeded in pinning him down, which forced the former Minister of Defence to personally request for the chairs "to be moved" so that the camera could catch the right angle.

An interesting point in the Slovenian elections is that the victory went to those parties which were earlier maligned at the time of Slovenian independence as "nation breaking" and "traitors to the national cause" by other proclaimed "nation-building" parties. In this context, the frequently attacked liberal democrats have all the more reason to exult in their victory, particularly because the best known "nation-building" parties and their leaders, who, during last year's June conflicts in Slovenia, were believed to have won life enthronement in Slovenian politics, suddenly experienced a total fiasco, thanks to the fickle affection of the voters.

The Democratic Party, which spent a rather large amount of money on its campaign, and which in the past assigned itself most of the credit for Slovenia's independence, won barely 5% of the vote. Due to this failure, it is certain that Dimitrij Rupel will have to give up his foreign minister's post and the positions of the other two ministers from the democratic ranks - Igor Bavcar (police) and Jelko Kacin (information) - are uncertain. Certain right wing parties, which up to now more or less called the tune in the Slovenian parliament, e.g. the National Democratic Party or the Liberal Party from Kranj, have now been definitely left outside the parliament. The Socialist Party of Slovenia, whose MPs proposed the plebiscite on independence and had a policy of distancing themselves from the "reds" in Ciril Ribicic's Party for Democratic Renewal (former Communists), didn't do any better. Now the socialists, representatives of the once "biggest political organization", are stepping down from the political scene. Social Democrats, Joze Pucnik and Defence Minister Janez Jansa avoided the similar fate by a hair's breadth. Thanks to the system of dividing up left-over undetermined votes, the party succeeded in attaining the 3.4% election threshold in votes, which allowed its four MPs (of the possible twenty in the lower house) to enter the parliament. Pucnik's comment was that this was a "catastrophe".

The Slovenian voters gave the victory to the more moderate, left-to-center parties, though it shouldn't be forgotten that the number of supporters of the conservative National Party (SNS) has grown considerably. This party, whose motto is a paraphrase of Hitler's speech on a Maribor balcony - "Let's do everything to make this country Slovenian again", which presupposes the cleansing of Slovenia of non-Slovenians - succeeded in gaining 12 seats for its MPs in the new parliament.

The victory of the Liberal Democrats makes it clear that the mandator of the next Slovenian government will be Janez Drnovsek. It is also very probable that Drnovsek and the LDP, in the interests of government stability, will make a coalition agreement with the Christian Democrats (which implies that their leader Lojze Peterle will be appointed Foreign Minister), and maybe with the reformed communists.

The Slovenian elections were carried out peacefull and the European observers were satisfied with their organization. The victory of the pragmatic and the nationalistically dispassionate liberal democrats has brought the first positive reaction from the world, and the representatives of the Croatian Social Liberal party (HSLS) in neighboring Croatia were also satisfied.

At any rate, these elections in Slovenia mark the beginning of a differently colored political period, because the voters, who two years ago voted for nationalist parties (as in the majority of other former socialist countries), this time gave precedence to moderate central or even leftist (in the true meaning of the work) parties in the resolving of economic and social problems. The victory of liberal and moderate parties in Slovenia (with the marked rise in xenophobic conservatives) is certainly the first important indication of change - one which could hopefully happen in the near future in other states of the former Yugoslavia.