Janez Jansa, the populist Prime Minister of Slovenia, an admirer of Donald Trump and an ally of Viktor Orbán, faces a motion of censure tomorrow, accused by the center-left opposition of being undemocratic and of not respecting the EU values.

The “constructive motion” has been presented by five of the six opposition parties, which add up to only 43 of the 46 votes that would be needed to remove Jansa and the center-right tripartite he has led since March last year from power.
The parliamentary initiative proposes as new prime minister Karl Erjavec, from the Retirees Party (DeSUS), who has been minister four times in three different portfolios.

BACK TO EUROPE

Erjavec affirms that Slovenia, which in June will assume the six-month rotating presidency of the European Union, “has been removed from the core of the EU” during the eleven months of Jansa’s government.
“My role is to put Slovenia back on the right track,” says Erjavec, whose government would be the third since the 2018 elections.
The promoters of the motion accuse Jansa of having established an “authoritarian democracy” that undermines the independence of Justice, the free press, civil society and the control bodies, and of having caused enormous damage to the prestige of the country abroad.

JANSA: “DESTRUCTIVE MOTION”

Jansa, for his part, affirms that this “destructive motion” is an attempt to destabilize the country during the covid-19 pandemic and before the beginning of the Slovenian Presidency of the EU.
“This is a pathetic outpouring of ideological hatred” which, in his opinion, would be “comical” if the country did not face major challenges.
Jansa, who was already head of government between 2004 and 2008 and between 2012 and 2013, and his Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) won the June 2018 elections with an anti-immigration and Eurocritical message, but could not form a government due to the rejection of the most of the parties to agree with him.
He had to wait until March 2020 to be sworn in as prime minister, following the resignation two months earlier of centrist Marjan Sarec due to the weakness of his five-party coalition.

Congratulating TRUMP

Last November Jansa drew attention by calling and congratulating Donald Trump, long before the results of the US elections were known, and by announcing that Joe Biden, who finally won the elections, would be the “weakest president in US history. “
The Slovenian prime minister has promoted conspiracy theories on social networks such as Twitter and Parler about an alleged electoral fraud in the US.
He has also launched nationalist anti-migration campaigns in the past along the lines of his Hungarian counterpart Viktor Orbán, while, according to independent Slovenian sources, media close to Orbán invested millions of euros in pro-Jansa media in Slovenia.

ATTACKS ON THE PRESS

His attacks on the independent press, which he claims is controlled by the “deep state” that Trump has also referred to, have sparked repeated protests from Slovenian and international press associations.
Jansa has described the NGO “Reporters without Borders” as “liars without borders” and has insulted a public television journalist who criticized him with the epigraph of “worn out prostitute”.
Last November, it supported Hungary and Poland when these two countries blocked the EU budget and aid against the crisis caused by the pandemic, to force that the receipt of community funds not be linked to compliance with the rule of law.

HUNGARIAN PROVINCE

His ties with Orbán are such that Tomaz Dezelan, professor of Political Science at the University of Ljubljana, assures Efe that Slovenia “is becoming a Hungarian province”, similar “increasingly to Georges Orwell’s 1984 due to his eagerness to destroy any element that does not fully support it. “
This expert affirms that his passage through the Government will be remembered “for the corruption scandals, the largest anti-government demonstrations in the history of the country and for one of the worst second waves of covid in the world.”
“The Jansa government is as harmful to Slovenia as Trump’s has been to the US,” says political analyst Alem Maksuti.
However, Maksuti considers the result of the motion of censure very uncertain and recognizes that everything depends on several deputies without ideology moved by private interests.
Still, he believes that even if Jansa passes the motion, this step marks “the beginning of the end” for his government.
“We are looking at the last scene in the miserable political career of a frustrated and incapable old politician,” he says.
Jansa’s SDS forms a coalition without a parliamentary majority together with the conservative New Slovenia and the center-left Modern Center Party
Jansa also has the support of the ultranationalist SNS, and two deputies from the Italian and Hungarian minorities, who traditionally do not vote against the government in power.

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