Slovenian Parliamentary Election - 13 July 2014

[Sir John Johns]

Conservative Prime minister Janez Janša led a minority government since the withdrawal of Gregor Virant's Civic List from ruling coalition over allegations of corruption against Janša. Now, DeSUS, a pensioner's party, had announced its upcoming departure from cabinet. Janša's ruling coalition now have only 36 seats out of 90.

It seems unlikely that opposition parties should be able to agree to form a government. The most probable outcome is an early election.

Slovenia still need to ratify Croatia's EU accession treaty.

[Sir John Johns]

Janez Janša was ousted by Parliament in a no confidence vote and replaced by Alenka Bratušek.
She headed a heteroclite coalition including her left-wing populist Positive Slovenia, the Social Democrats, DeSUS, and the Gregor Virant's Civic List. The new government was approved by the National Assembly on Wednesday. Elections will be theoretically held in 2014, but the coalition could broke apart before that date.
http://www.sloveniatimes.com/parliament-endorses-bratusek-cabinet

The new government had to deal with big economic problems and the situation looks like somewhat familiar: unpopular austerity measures, social unrest, and corruption scandals. The mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, is under fire over allegations of corruption and resigned recently the leadership of Positive Slovenia to Bratušek.

I found one poll from last month:
http://www.sloveniatimes.com/public-opinion-govt-approval-rating-record-low
Positive Slovenia was in third position with a poor 7.2%. FTR it was ahead in an October 2012 poll (before the Janković affairs broke out) with 15.6% (link: http://www.sloveniatimes.com/poll-opposition-gaining-support-because-austerity-measures)

Also, in December, the mayor of Maribor Franc Kangler resigned over corruption allegations. An early municipal election was organized last Sunday. The winner is appararently a political newcomer and one of the leaders of the protests against Franc Kangler. Turnout was only 31%.

http://www.sloveniatimes.com/maribor-by-election-fistravec-goes-from-protester-to-mayor

[Talleyrand]

What exactly are the corruption charges against most of these pollutions? Embezzlement, bribery, political favors, something else?

[Sir John Johns]

Concerning Janša and Janković, the Commission for the Prevention of Corruption (CPC) found that they underreported their revenues.

https://www.kpk-rs.si/en/the-commission/news/-/01/2013/slovenian-commission-for-the-prevention-of-corruption-found-a-number-of-violations-of-financial-disclosures-obligations-by-the-prime-minister-and-the-head-of-the-opposition

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Kangler is accused of mismanagement, fraudulent privatization (notably the traffic fine collection), abuse of power, clientelism, and plagiarism of his thesis.

The big problem is that few politicians were prosecuted. Kangler was elected to the Upper House and so benefited from the parliamentary immunity. It is unclear if he could take his seat (there is not that much information in English and I don't understand Slovenian).

[Sir John Johns]

A minister has already resigned, after only five days in office, because he owns an illegally built house

[Sir John Johns]

Ljubljana mayor Zoran Janković wins back the leadership of Positive Slovenia party, defeating incumbent leader and Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek. Bratušek has stated she would resign if she lost the leadership of the party. The other three parties that are currently part of the government coalition are opposed to Janković (who is accused of corruption), so it is likely that the government will fall and early elections summoned later in the year.

Last polls indicate a close race between the Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), still led by the irremovable Janez Janša, and the Social Democrats (SD), part of the ruling coalition. PS is a distant third while neither the far right nor the newly founded Solidarnost achieving a breakthrough so far. There are however a significant number of undecided and of people than will not going to vote.

Meanwhile, the SDS managed to gather enough signatures to force a referendum on the opening of the communist era archives. The ruling coalition at first set up the referendum to take place on 4 May but this was rejected by the Constitutional Court. The new date has been fixed to the 8 June, but the SDS disagree. They want the referendum to be held on the same day than the EU election (on May 25).

[EPG]

There can't be many examples of the head of government's party voting (implicitly) to quit government.

[Sir John Johns]

There can't be many examples of the head of government's party voting (implicitly) to quit government.

It was widely assumed that the government would have anyway collapsed due to tensions between part of PS and Gregor Virant's Civic List, a junior coalition partner.

Bratušek has announced she will leave PS but stays as prime minister so far. She has the support of 12 MPs against 15 for Janković. There will be talks between coalition partners about the possibility to maintain the government on life support until autumn in order to avoid early elections during the summer holidays (after the resignation of a PM, the Parliament has 30 days to choose a new PM; if it failed to do so, it would be dissolved but elections must be held 40 days after the dissolution as soon and two months as late). However, Civic List has previously called for immediate elections while it is unclear what Janković will do. Despite the fact that PS is virtually split in two, it still have to campaign for EU election with a list formed before the rift as the deadline to change the composition of lists is over.

To make things even more insane, opposition leader Janez Janša was sentenced on 28 April to two years in jail in a corruption scandal involving the Finnish company Patria. Janša has stated he will not resign the leadership even if he has to go to jail. Janša denied any wrongdoing and claimed to be the victim of a conspiracy hatched by his archenemy, former president Milan Kučan.

[Sir John Johns]

The referendum on archives law failed as turnout was only 11.6%, the second lowest in a referendum, and far from the quorum of 20% of registered voters required.

The date for the early legislative election has been set up for the 13 July.

Alenka Bratušek has launched her own party, the so-called 'Alliance of Alenka Bratušek' (ZaAB). She will faced, besides of Positive Slovenia and the Social Democrats (which both suffered big losses in the UE election with SD barely keeping a MEP and Positive Slovenia failing to get a single one), two other newly founded center left parties: the Miro Cerar's Party (SMC) and Verjamem (I believe) which after its good results in the UE election decided to jump into the national stage.

Last poll give:
SMC 16.9%, SDS 13.1%, SD 6.5%, DeSUS 4.9%, ZaAB 4.5%, NSi 3.7%, PS 1.7%, SLS 1.4%, DL 0.5%. The remaining is either don't know either will abstain. Apparently the poll was conducted before Verjanem announced it will participate in the election.

[Sir John Johns]

Janez Janša is now in jail but he will still run for a seat from prison.

A poll gave Miro Cerar as prefered prime minister with 41% against 11% for Janša and 5% for Bratušek. Cerar is a jurist with no previous political experience who found his own party few weeks ago.

[FredLindq]

What kind off party is Miro Cerar's Party - Stranka Mira Cerarj?! Accoriding to Wikipedia its is Ideology: Liberalism, Economic liberalism and Political position: Centre or Centre-right.

However accordong to Slovenina news sources it is centre left. http://www.sloveniatimes.com/centre-left-politicians-starting-to-talk-cooperation

What is most correct?!

[Sir John Johns]

What kind off party is Miro Cerar's Party - Stranka Mira Cerarj?! Accoriding to Wikipedia its is Ideology: Liberalism, Economic liberalism and Political position: Centre or Centre-right.

However accordong to Slovenina news sources it is centre left. http://www.sloveniatimes.com/centre-left-politicians-starting-to-talk-cooperation

What is most correct?!

Hard to say. The party claims to aim to "overcome the left-right ideological divide". Otherwise, judging by what I have understand from their platform (using Google Translate, I'm not a Slovenian-speaker), it is mostly a collection of platitudes with no figures and no concrete program. It sounds like a centerist party with emphasis on the "rule of law", fight against corruption, open government, better education, less bureaucracy and liberalization of the economy. While SMC advocated some privatization, it is however opposed to the privatization of Telekom Slovenije, which was decided by the current government. AFAIK Cerar doesn't have indicated which coalition partners he would prefered if he had to form the next government.

Most of the SMC's success is only to due to the fact it is "new", "clean" and led by a non politician. It also benefited from the complete collapse of the two centerist/liberal parties (Zares and Civic List) which have been slaughtered in the Euro elections; leaders of both parties resigned and it is widely assumed that the two parties will failed to reenter Parliament (Zares already lost its parliamentary representation in 2011). Verjamem is already no longer hype as it polls around 1%, far from the 10.4% it gains in the EU elections, so it's probable that its voters go to SMC.

[LJU-ORD]

Sir John Johns's analysis is correct. In recent days, the SMC has been widely criticized by other parties and the media for not taking specific stances on various issues. Of course, this ambiguity is essentially what the SMC's strategy is all about: They wish to appeal to both the center-left and the center-right and are afraid that specific proposals would only end up alienating potential voters.

This approach is viable right now because the SMC enjoys a substantial lead in all recent polling despite a notable lack of a concrete program. The Slovenian electorate is deeply disenchanted with the established political parties, and Miro Cerar is seen by many as a reasonable, uncorrupted political novice who could finally overcome the left/right political stalemate in Slovenia. In this respect, he is a bit like Barack Obama circa 2008 -- people can project their own hopes and desires on him and his party.

And speaking of projections: Even though Cerar is considered a center-left candidate, I see him as a realist and believe that he will continue on the track of economic reforms -- maybe even increase the pace to some extent. (He has already indicated that he would be willing to enter a coalition with any center-right party except the SDS.) I believe that his anything-but-courageous avoidance of specific proposals is the result of the left's (and the labor union's) resistance to economic reforms -- and he can't afford to lose many left-of-center votes if he wants a decisive victory. (On the other hand, some of Cerar's advisors have been skeptical of reforms in the past, so I'm not sure how committed to a reform agenda he really is. I don't know if anyone is really sure right now.)

[Sir John Johns]

Exit polls:
SMC: 36.9%
SDS: 19.2%
DeSUS: 9.7%
United Left: 7.1%
SD: 5.8%
NSi: 5.4%
Alliance of Alenka Bratušek: 4.7%

All others (including Positive Slovenia and SLS) under the 4% threshold. Big result of Cerar and pretty strong result for United Left. Finally Bratušek managed to cross the threshold.

[Tender Branson]

Official results here:
 
16% of the votes already counted.

http://volitve.gov.si/dz2014/en

Turnout was only 39%.

[Kosmos]

Exit polls:
SMC: 36.9%
SDS: 19.2%
DeSUS: 9.7%
United Left: 7.1%
SD: 5.8%
NSi: 5.4%
Alliance of Alenka Bratušek: 4.7%

All others (including Positive Slovenia and SLS) under the 4% threshold. Big result of Cerar and pretty strong result for United Left. Finally Bratušek managed to cross the threshold.

Kinda amusing, and fitting, that Positive Slovenia collapsed. I mean, the party had already dropped in the polls, but the final collapse came when the party for some reason decided to remove Bratušek and reinstate Janković despite the corruption allegations surrounding him.

Now he failed to return to parliament, while Bratušek's new party gain entry (albeit just barely).

[Sir John Johns]

Final results:
Turnout (51.7%)
SMC: 34.49% (36 seats)
SDS: 20.71% (21 seats)
DeSUS: 10.18% (10 seats)
SD: 5.98% (6 seats)
ZL: 5.97% (6 seats)
NSi: 5.59% (5 seats)
ZaAB: 4.38% (4 seats)
============
SLS: 3.95%
PS: 2.97%
SNS: 2.20%
Pirate Party: 1.34%
Verjamem: 0.78%
DL: 0.64
Greens: 0.53%

The most probable coalition is SMC with DeSUS, SD, and ZaAB. NSi is also a possible coalition partner. DeSUS is the only ruling party to improve its score and will certainly try to get benefits for its electoral clientele, the pensionners. I believe that SD has few to gain to stay in power: the party had its worst result in its history and barely topped the far-left ZL, which is one of the big winner of the election. On the right, it's a disaster for the SDS which had its worst result since 2000. Only NSi gain some ground (with an extra seat) while SLS is out of parliament for the first time since 1990. Both PS and DL are also out of parliament; they gained many seats few months after their foundation but are now virtually dead after only one legislature. For some reason, the far right failed to benefit from the political and economic crisis and remains out of parliament.

I have made some maps

For the lulz, the EU election results map (it was in May 2014)


Two months later ...







There is basically an urban/rural divide with towns voting for the left-wing and the centerist/liberal parties while campaigns favoring right-wing parties.

[politicus]

Nice maps!

"Campaigns" for rural areas is a little too frenchy.

[Sir John Johns]

Ugh... Sorry. In my defence, being bad at foreign languages is VERY frenchy

Anyway some interesting stuff about transfer of votes on the blog of one the founders of the polling company Valicon:


This is percent of the total electorate with only transfer over 0.5% (so roughly 1% of those who voted) appearing. neudeležba = abstention, novi ('new') seems to refer to parties that participated in the 2011 election but didn't run this year.

Another graph about when voters made their choice
Today in the voting booth/today/the last few days/last week/the last weeks/a long time ago


From another Mediana polling company, the breakdown by age. Unsurprisingly, DeSUS overperformed with oldest voters. More interesting is the very good results of ZL with younger voters.

More random numbers here (in English). Most noticeable is the gender gap: SDS is the only party with a majority of male voters while ZaAB has the most feminized electorate.

[Famous Mortimer]

Interesting, no voters going from SD to ZL.

[MaxQue]

Interesting, no voters going from SD to ZL.

Well, from what I see, it's on a sample of 34 ZL voters. Considering than ZL got 52 189 votes, that's make a margin of error of 17%.

[EPG]

More questions from me:
Why are the Slovenian pensioners so well organised politically?
Moral and civic liberty issues seem much more salient than in most of Slovenia's EU peers. Is this the case? If so, why?

[Sir John Johns]

Interesting, no voters going from SD to ZL.

Well, from what I see, it's on a sample of 34 ZL voters. Considering than ZL got 52 189 votes, that's make a margin of error of 17%.

I suspect that the most left-winger SD voters have already defected during the 2011 elections and went then either to PS, TRS (a ZL forerunner) or to abstention. By that time SD, which headed the government, had initiated some austerity measures and proposed a mini-jobs law which was hardly popular with trade unions and youth organizations (it was ultimately defeated in a landslide in a referendum).

More questions from me:

Honestly, I can't give you definitive answers as I lack a deep knowledge of Slovenian politics and there are not many things in English about the subject. What follows are only some elements that can only give some explanations. Also sorry for the errors in English and the poor writing.

Why are the Slovenian pensioners so well organised politically?

Honestly, I can't give you definitive answers as I lack a deep knowledge of Slovenian politics. I have made some research but I found nothing in English explaining the success of the pensioners' movement in Slovenia. What is clear is that the Slovene Federation of Pensioners' Associations (ZDUS) is very powerful. According to its website, it has 230,000 members (if the number is correct it's accounting for 11% of the total Slovenian population) which make it the largest membership organization in the country. Also DeSUS has proved to be successful into making itself the king-maker party. It has been part of every government since 2000 (with a short interruption in 2011) and has so far quite successfully managed to either cancel either water down any ambitious reform of the pensions system by periodically threaten to bring the government down by withdrawing from the ruling coalition. In 2006, it forced Janša to reintroduce the indexation of pensions to wages and in 2011 it took a hardline stance against the Pahor government's proposed pension reform plan (while at the same time the ZDUS appeared more conciliatory), left the government and gathered enough signatures to force a referendum on the Pahor plan which was overwhelmingly rejected. So, DeSUS being able to defend pensioners' interests is a first explanation for its electoral success.

Then, there is the Slovenian demography. According to the Statistical Office of the Republic of Slovenia, the retired population accounts for 30% of the total population over 15 (source), a high number due not only to the ageing of the population but also to the low legal age of pension and a fairly common practice of early retirement. Don't know how many voters are also pensioners but this must be anyway a big share of the electorate. I suppose that like everywhere oldest voters are more likely to turnout especially when international pressure for a pensions reform increased due to economic turmoil.

Finally, there are probably some cultural factors at work. The neighbouring Croatia has also a quite successful pensioners' party which is apparently as opportunistic as DeSUS. I have very poor knowledge of Croatian politics so I'm not sure if what followed also applies to Croatia. Maybe (this is very speculative), the strength of the Slovenian pensioners is related to the persistence in Slovenia of a powerful (especially by Eastern European standards) trade union movement and to the Slovenian quite peculiar social model. Even if trade union membership has sharply declined since the end of the Yugoslav rule, it is still quite high (estimated between 25% and 30%). Slovenian trade unions benefit from an institutional recognition (they have representatives to the National Council, the upper house of Slovenian Parliament which represents social and economic interests) and take part in the administration of pensions', health insurance and employment services. They also send delegates to the Economic and Social Council (made up by representatives from trade unions, employers' associations and the government) which is a key player in social-policy making. Until the economic crisis social dialogue (through the Economic and Social Council and collective bargaining) was the cornerstone of the Slovenian social model. Combined with the still large weight of the state in the economy and the reticence to open Slovenian economy to foreign capital, it is usually criticized from outside as 'neo-corporatism'. Perhaps it should be related to both the Titoist 'self-management' model and to the influential cooperative movement that emerged in Slovenia during the second part of the 19th century and boomed under the influence of the Christian Social thinker Janez Evangelist Krek (whose legacy is still claimed by both SLS and NSi).

Moral and civic liberty issues seem much more salient than in most of Slovenia's EU peers. Is this the case? If so, why?

The 'anticorruption wave' must not be exaggerated as it also happen in a context of low turnout (both in Maribor mayoral election and in the last legislative election). Also an opportunistic party like DeSUS managed to improve its results despite the fact that its leader, Karl Erjavec, is far from being clean (he was involved in the Patria case before being acquitted and was forced to resign as minister of Environment back in 2010 due to financial mismanagement). The important thing here is that the Slovenian political model has been based since the begin of the 1990s on consensus, social dialogue and the defence of the welfare state. Compared to other Eastern European countries (especially the other Yugoslavian countries), Slovenia had a smooth transition from communism to market society. No civil war, no authoritarian experiment (like in Croatia) and no shock therapy. Equality is a very important value in Slovenian society and there is a low tolerance to income inequalities (see a big paper on equality in Slovenia here). An OECD study published in 2011 showed that Slovenia was at the end of the 2000s the most equal country among OECD countries with a Gini coefficient of 0.24.

But the economic crisis has exposed the scale of the corruption and the mismanagement and undermined public confidence in the political class, the Church and the trade unions. According to Eurobarometer 74 (published in February 2011), 74% of Slovenians tended not to trust justice; it was 49% for police, 39% for army, 65% for religious institutions (the number has certainly worsened since), 70% for trade unions, 75% for big companies, 91% for political parties, 80% for government, 82% for parliament and 46% for EU. The distrust in trade unions has significantly rise of 25% since the previous Eurobarometer (apparently taken in autumn 2007) as the distrust in big companies (rise of 23%).

There were numerous corruption scandals involving various politicians and exposing the close proximity between the political class and businessmen. Quite tellingly, the construction sector (an economic sector very prone to corruption) has gone almost entirely bankrupt. The Catholic Church, already quite unpopular with large segments of the population due to its uncritical and not exactly discreet support of Janša, was embroiled into a major financial scandal: in 2011, the archdiocese of Maribor went nearly bankrupt as it had accumulated a debt of 800 million euros thanks to a series of reckless investments. Hilariously the scandal erupted after it was revealed that one of the archdiocese-owned TV-channel appeared to aired porn programs... The scandal has led to the resignations of two successive archbishops of Maribor and of the archbishop of Ljubljana, beheading the Slovenian Church. That didn't prevent the administrator of the Ljubljana seat to denounce Janša's imprisonment and to compare Janša's trial to the communist-era show trials.

Distrust in trade unions is certainly due to their opposition to pensions reform and confrontation with the government with a part of opinion seeing them as hard-liners unable to make compromises. There are also some tensions between unions' rank-and-file members and unions' leadership. Some workers found the trade unions too soft while others refused to go on strike as their own financial situation was bad. There are also apparently growing concerns about a segmentation of the labour market between on one hand oldest workers which enjoyed stable employment (layoffs aren't very easy) and have planned to retire at an early age; and on the other hand youngs workers which have precarious and underpaid jobs. One of the reasons is the overuse of the so-called "student work" by employers (see here - btw, pengovksy's blog is very informative about Slovenian politics even if written sometimes in a quite crude style).

So basically, Slovenia currently experimentes big changes with the order that emerged from the collapse of Yugoslavia being challenged by political and economical crisis but with no concrete alternative emerging. Governments have followed (or tried to follow) neoliberal policies largely rejected by population as the ruling class seems to be out of touch with common man's reality and to be above the laws.
The maiden National Assembly session was held yesterday and Janša was permitted to temporarily left jail to attend while his partisans protested outside the Parliament. It's pretty unclear if he could stay permanently as deputy. New speaker is Milan Brglez a 46-year old academic and former vice-president of the Slovenian Red Cross and a newcomer in politics. However, DeSUS has already demanded the post of speaker of National Assembly as part of any coalition deal with Cerar. There are also disagreements among potential coalition allies (SMC, SD, ZaAB, and DeSUS) over the name of Slovenia's next EU commissioner.

[EPG]

That is very thorough, thank you.