Ok... let's start!

GENERAL INFO
First in brief some general info of our state and political system. Slovenia proclaimed its constitution in December 1991, after getting its independence in June 1991, and its constitutional system is a parliamentary democracy.
The head of state is the president of the republic, whose role is more or less representative and is elected for a maximum of 2, 5-year terms by direct elections.
The legislative authority is the national assembly with 90 deputies, each elected for 4-year terms. All but 2 of these are elected by mixed member proportional representation system; the remaining are representatives from the Italian and Hungarian national communities. Then we have the national council, it performs an advisory role. Members are elected for a 5-year term (40 members).
Executive authority is the government which consists of the prime minister and other ministers. The government and the ministers are independent within the framework of their jurisdiction, and responsible to the national assembly.
Judicial power in Slovenia is implemented by courts with general responsibilities and specialized courts which deal with matters relating to specific legal areas. Fore more info click here. Or here.

SLOVENIAN GOVERNMENTS
All Slovenian governments were coalition governments. The 1st one was right wing headed by Lojze Peterle (1990 – 1992), the 2nd, 3rd and 4th were left, led by Dr. Janez Drnovsek (1992 – 2000). The Prime Minister of the 5th (right) government (June 2000–November 2000) was Dr. Andrej Bajuk. The 6th government was again left, headed again by Dr. Janez Drnovsek (2000 – 2002). ((You have probably noticed that dr. Janez Drnovsek, who died from cancer past February, played a very important role in our politics. He was also the Head of the state form 2002 to 2007.)) And finally the seventh government was headed by Anton Rop (2000 – 2004) and was again left orientated. But then in 2004 people of Slovenia elected theirs first proper right wing government. The prime minister became the leader of the old opposition Janez Jansa. The sources of the info are here, if you want to go in depth.


^{Next Sunday, 21st of September, we have our 5th National Assembly elections (6th if we count the first democratic elections in 1990, before the independence).}

THE REASONS
And now, the reasons why I will not vote for the man in the picture, our prime minister Janez Jansa. Of course from my very personal point of view.

FIRST
The actual government removed a very good proposal of the law of the same sex partnership, made by the former left government trough a long (8 years) process of civil dialog between the representatives of the government, specialists and nongovernmental associations. The removed law would provide almost all social and human rights to the same-sex couples, except adopting. It was a consensus law, which already passed the first reading in the parliament. Instead of the removed good law proposal, the actual government made its own law proposal of registered partnership and passed it without civil dialogue trough the parliamentary procedure in just 8 months. The law, now in power, is highly discriminatory and it not includes almost any of the social rights for same-sex couples. That’s the main reason that Viki and me got registered in October 2006 and presented the case to the Constitutional court in November 2006. We’re still waiting for the decision of the judges.

SECOND
As a journalist I found this government trying hard to influence on our freedom of speech, expression, opinion and media freedom. They passed some crucial laws allowing them to insert representatives of governmental politics in the boars and councils of major media in Slovenia. And they succeeded in their attempts transforming, if I give just one example, the public radio-television (where I work) in the state radio-television. They removed the journalists, editors, directors … they didn’t like replacing them with their forces. They also presented almost every critic of the government made by journalist who still tries to be independent as harming for the reputation of our country. So journalists in these 4 years became state enemies number one. When we tried to internationalize this problem and also some European journalistic association and other authorities condemned the behavior of our government, it became just worse.
One example: during the Slovenian presidency of the European council (January – June 2008), the government PR office delivered some press materials (especially prepared for the foreign journalist) to foreign press under the door directly to their hotel rooms, avoiding the Slovene journalists to see the materials. Other staff was delivered normally in the press centre.

THIRD
We had an incredible case of Romophobia in the past years which escalated in the Strojan case. You can watch the short presentation of the case here. All the main human right institutions (Amnesty International, Peace Institute, Human rights ombudsman) condemned the action of our government. Thomas Hammarberg, Commissioner for Human Rights (Council of Europe) came to Slovenia in November 2006. In the press conference in Ljubljana he said: “Irrespective of the background and history to the tensions, it is unacceptable that a group of people have to leave their homes because the majority population in the neighborhood so require and that safety of the minority group is at risk. I have also learnt that racist, anti-Gypsy language was used in threats against the Strojan family. Among the victims of these developments were totally innocent children.”
Just this case for me is enough strong to NEVER NEVER vote this man and his people.

FOURTH
We had an incredible story of human rights violations in the so called Erased case. More then 18.000 people, mainly from the other former Yugoslavia republics, were erased from the register of permanent residents in 1992 trough the night. They faced expulsion after losing their jobs, pensions and health insurance. They lost all their rights, human, social, citizen, they became aliens in our country without any rights. It is a very complicated story but basically, in 1999, the Constitutional Court declared the act of "erasing" illegal and unconstitutional and the right wing politicians are trying very hard not to respect the decision of the constitutional court and in several attempts they try to find some legal solutions to avoid the court’s decision. In addition, they are trying to convince (pretty successful) the Slovene public that the Erased, as now we call them, are all enemies of the independent Slovene nation, those who were fighting with the Yugoslav army to prevent Slovenia to get it’s independency. If you want to go in depth, click here. And also in the ECRI (European Commision against Racism and Intolerance) report here.
I have to stress that no left or right government is innocent in this story, but the conservatives are those, who are now trying hard to prevent justice to be done!

FIFTH
In the process of introducing the new system of payment in the public sector the government deeply discredited the 3rd branch of the political power in Slovenia – the judges, delivering them less money for the salaries compared to the other two branches of power and trying to introduce a system in which every judge will be paid and rewarded according to his/her success to solve as many cases as possible. There was a great dispute about this topic in Slovenia, but the government in it’s well known populistic way convinced the majority of people, as surveys shows, that judges are lazy and want just more money. Judges are now in white strike. Also other offices that have the power to control the government are under great pressure: the anticorruption commission, information commissioner, human rights ombudsman …

SIXTH
I could go on with writing the causes why I will never vote for Janez Jansa, but nobody will read this enormous post, so I’ll list briefly some other reasons: from the beginning of his mandate our association (DIH – Association for integration of homosexuality) lost almost every funding by the Ministry of work, family and social affairs for our social programmes. We are suing the ministry because we are firmly convinced we were expulsed on the base of homophobia. In fact the same programmes were financed by previous legislature.
There is a growing atmosphere of fear, caused by the government accusing anyone who is criticizing them as a state enemy, replacing the people practically anywhere (from the main companies to media) with their people, censuring, pressing, mobbing …
Around 10% of people are living under the soil of poverty, which is in fact not a lot, but we are noticing that the social differences in Slovenia are increasing.
After the introduction of euro the prices, especially of food, just exploded, inflation rate in Slovenia is the highest in the countries with Euro (more than 6%).
There were some very strange cases of taking over some major companies; we are talking of the so called process of tycoonisation of our economy.
There are a lot of people from the republics of former Yugoslavia without the status of minority being recognized. According to the Statistical office there are 39.000 Serbs, 36.000 Croats, 22.000 Bosnians, 4.000 Macedonians and 3000 people from Montenegro living in Slovenia. And they don’t have the status of the minority, although they tried several times to achieve it. We have also 2.300 Italians and 6.300 Hungarian people. They have the status of minority.
The power of the Catholic Church is growing and in these 4 years this institution became omnipresent in every sphere of life in Slovenia, ignoring completely the constitutional definition that state and church in this country are separated.
And of course there is this atmosphere of hate speech, nationalism, conservativism, populism, tolerating violence, racism, xenophobia, Romophobia, homophobia, sexism, reinforcing of the patriarchal arrangement of the society … that makes living in Slovenia unbearable in the last 4 years…

If you think, I’m exaggerating, just read the Third report of The European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (Council of Europe) on Slovenia here.

I will not write about the positive stuff this government has indeed made in these 4 years, they are more or less strictly economically related. I’m convinced you’ll find a lot of information glorifying the government here. (The paradox of the story is, that during the collapse of communism and Yugoslavia, Janez Jansa was one of the greatest fighters for democracy.)

That are the main reasons I will not choose the conservative right option of Janez Jansa next Sunday, 21st. I will vote left. But which progressive liberal party to vote? That’s another problem.