Di Anej Korsika – My general comment would be that there is a lot to say and a lot to analyze but very hard to draw any conclusions or any definitive prospects for the future developments. Let me try to elaborate.

First of all the voter turnout was only slighlty over the 50% and just slightly higher than on the last elections in 2014, despite the anticipations that it might be much higher. What these voters brought into the parliament is, however, much more interesting. A record number of parties- 9, have entered the national assembly, more than ever. Parliament has 90 seats, two of each are reserved for the representative of Italian minority and the representative of Hungarian minority, these two never enter coalitions but usually support them with their votes. That means at least 46 MPs are neccessary to form a parliamentary majority a nd this is something that might prove extremely difficult this time. Lets see why.

Nominally speaking clear winner of the elections is the party SDS, lead by Janez Janša (and financialy supported by Viktor Orban), we may add 🙂 It achieved 25 mandates. Falling far behind on the second place is the Party of Marjan Šarec, mayor of a smaller Slovenian town, that made his national political debute last year as a candidate for the president of the republic. He was quite successful in challenging the incumbent president (Borut Pahor) that only managed to defeat him in the second round of elections. It was to be expected that he will try to cach in this political capital on parliamentary elections as well and in the beginning it seemed he is THE new face into which centrist/left-liberal voterls would invest all their hopes. As they did on last elections with current PM Miro Cerar and first opinion polls confirmed this, but as the election campaign dragged on, Šarec found himself on a downward slope and ultimately came in second with only 13 mandates.

On third place came Social democrats with 10 mandates and although they managed to improve their result from last elections, when they reached their historical low with only 6 mandates, this result was still a huge dissapointment and far away from their glory days of 2008 elections when they won 29 mandates. Initially polls even showed that Social Democrats migh be the winners but similar to Marjan Šarec- the longer the campaign was, the more they lost. Just slightly lower was the result of the incumbent governing party of premier Miro Cerar that also won 10 mandates. In comparison to their debut in 2014 when they entered the parliament with 36 MPs (an all time record) their result seems to be an absolute catastrophy, however it was not recieved as such. In contrast to Šarec and Social Democrats, Cerar and his party actually improved their initial result and were on the upward trend, coming back from the dead as at one time it even seemed they could struggle even entering the parliament.

Fifth, with very similar result than third and fourth but with one MP less, came the party Levica. With 9 MPs it improved its result from 2014 elections when it entered parliament with 6 MPs. Socialist Levica is surely one of the bigger suprises of these elections as it managed to go against the governing current of neoliberal and/or nationalist ideology of other parties, while also managing to deliver a trustworthy and aplicable political programe. As we will see in the moment it also became an inevitable part of any attempt to form a center-left government. Sixth came in the Christian democrats with 7 mandates, better result than on the last elections but still falling short of 10 MPs that their chairman set as goal.

Seventh place was achieved by another surprise of these elections, party of former PM, Alenka Bratušek, that initially nobody would bet on to enter parliament, so it was an unexpected an rather impressive comeback. Bratušek, the only woman prime minister in history of Slovenian elections, thus even more than Miro Cerar, came back from the dead. Moving in the opposite direction, so ti seems, is the party Desus, lead by Karl Erjavec, incumbent minister of foreign affairs. Desus lost half of its MPs, coming in at 5. Lastly, Slovenian nationalist party, led by Zmago Jelinčič also experienced a comeback, reintering the parliament after 10 years of absence.

What to say as we have revealed this very complicated deck Slovenian voters have just dealt? First of all, elections winner, SDS, cannot form a government unless one of the left or center-left parties would be willing to join, which all of them have already adamantly refused during the election campaing. Beside SDS (25), only Christian Democrats (7) and Nationalists (4) are profiled as right-wing parties, therefore making their total sum of MPs at 36 and falling short 10 mandates of forming a government. It seems highly unlikely that Janša will succeed in forming a government. If right political spectrum does not have enough parties, left seems to overflow with them. Other 6 parties that could be liberaly defined as left or center-left jointly do have 52 mandates of which 5 would be needed to form 47 MP majority. Basically the only dilemma of this parliamentary arithmetics is whether Desus or party of Alenka Bratušek would be left out, as both won 5 MPs of which one could be potentially left out. Still leaving us with 5 party coalition that would be record number of parties and very difficult to handle. Moreso, potential prime minster, leader of the strongest of this bunch of parties, Marjan Šarec (13 MPs) is entering parliament for the first time and his highly unlikely to be capable to do this kind of difficult manouvering that would be needed for such kind of coalition to work. Neither is his upperhand that strong in comparison to third, fourth and fifth party, achieving 10, 10 and 9 MPs respectively.

This is all while not even tackling the ideological differences of these parties. Arguably there arent many between a majority of these parties, however precisely because of that they would probably be have to exaggerated in turn generating inner-coalition tension and turmoil. Even before that the big question remains whether Levica, the one party that is clearly ideologically diferentiated from all the others, would even be willing to participate in such a coalition. During the campaign their president assured the voters that they are willing to enter a left coalition, not a center-left one. Beyond these declerations the question remains, would Levica concede to participate in a government that would not be willing to remove barbed wire from the south state border, that would not agree to spending 1,2 billion EUR on social policies rather than on military gear and equipment demanded by NATO etc. etc. Of course, if neither Janša manages to lure 10 MPs from left wing parties and Levica refuses to participate in a coalition, another early elections are not out of the question. One thing is clear, these elections delivered more questions than answers.

nella foto il giovane leader della Sinistra Slovena, Luka Menec