“The National Assembly has just taken an crucial step toward ensuring greater success for Slovenia in the future. However, this was not the final step toward Slovenia gaining a government of development,” said Janez Janša immediately after a secret ballot on Friday in the Slovenian parliament. This led to him being elected as the country’s fresh prime minister by a vote of 51 to 36.
Will this end the government crisis in Slovenia, where, 2 months after the March elections, there is inactive no government, and Robert Golob’s effort to form a centre-left coalition has failed?
Janez Janša hopes that in the coming days, or within 2 weeks at the latest, Slovenia will yet have “a complete squad that will work toward a bright future for Slovenia”. As he stated, his SDS organization has “some experience regarding how coalitions function from erstwhile governments”, and talks on the distribution of posts will begin, according to him, as early as next Monday, on May 25th.
The politician reiterated that the opposition will be offered a draft partnership agreement for development. Their decision will find whether this will be a word “in which we search common ground for the good of Slovenia, or whether they will simply attack and exclude us, just as they did erstwhile they were in power”. Janša hopes that this time “it will be different,” though he said they are “ready for anything”.
Janša – who will turn 68 in September – was elected prime minister in a secret ballot with 51 votes, meaning he received 3 more votes than the size of his coalition: the SDS, the bloc of Christian Democratic parties specified as NSi, SLS, Fokus, and the Democrats led by his erstwhile colleague Anže Logar. This group besides has the support of the opposition Resnica (Truth) party, whose leader Zoran Stevanović had already been elected talker of parliament. Janša himself firmly rejects allegations of vote-buying, expressing concern that this might be a substance of “some kind of inter-party-political manoeuvring”. In his view, “it is likely a substance of common sense within these parties or parliamentary groups as well.”
According to the rules of procedure of the National Assembly, after being elected prime minister, Janša has 15 days to submit a list of ministerial candidates to parliament. In accordance with an amendment to the Government Act, which was supported in late April by MPs from the SDS, NSi, SLS, Fokus, Democrats, and Resnica, the fresh government will have 14 ministries.
Janez Janša will head the Slovenian government for the 4th time. Barring any extraordinary surprise, this is simply a reality with which Slovenians will gotta come to terms. This will be a hard experience for both a crucial condition of the country’s polarized society and the political scene. This is especially actual given the circumstances of the SDS’s electoral defeat in the spring 2022 elections, which was brought about by mass protests against Janša’s government.
The manner in which Janša has now returned to power is already facing sharp criticism from the left and centre of the Slovenian political scene, both within the parties moving into opposition and among opinion leaders. many commentators accuse the parties of the fresh centre-right coalition of building a government based on deceiving voters. These accusations are directed primarily at Anže Logar’s Democrats and Zoran Stevanović’s Resnica. These political formations and their leaders, in the view of any voters, have falsely suggested they would not join a government with Janša. Logar – a erstwhile organization colleague of Janša and abroad minister in his erstwhile government – repeated on multiple occasions while forming his own party, Demokrati, that he had small in common with Janša, thereby attempting to draw more average and intellectual right-wing voters distant from the SDS. Stevanović – a populist who rose to prominence on the political scene in part thanks to mass protests against the SDS and Janša’s governments, leading anti-vaccine and anti-establishment movements – even signed a notarized message during the election run declaring he would never join another Janez Janša government.
However, from a political standpoint, Janez Janša simply did what any politician aiming to form a government at any cost would do. Left-wing parties will first gotta admit that this politician, who has held various roles in Slovenian politics since the very beginning of Slovenia’s independence, has simply one more time demonstrated greater political acumen and experience. The decision by Logar’s Democrats and Stevanović’s Resnica, according to commentators, may in turn mean their first and last word in parliament. This assumes, of course, that both parties were not conceived from the outset as parties intended to last longer than a single term.
In any case, it was Logar and Stevanović who primarily made Janša’s return to power possible, which, to be honest, should not come as a large surprise, as many political scientists had predicted specified a script much earlier.
Janez Janša will begin his fresh word as head of government in the face of fierce opposition from opposition parties, labour unions, and NGOs – and this, in turn, is simply a reality with which the ruling right must come to terms.
Who is Janez Janša?
Born in 1958, this politician, who leads the Slovenian Democratic organization (Slovenska demokratska stranka, SDS), has been the most colourful and controversial figure in local politics for decades. For many Slovenians, Janez Janša has taken on an almost demonic status, while others fanatically defend him and see him as the “saviour of the nation”. He is an eccentric and charismatic talker who frequently resorts to less-than-diplomatic phrases. He loves witty retorts, which he shares far and wide frequently via X, formerly known as Twitter, for which he has already earned the ironic nickname “Marshal Twitto”.
“In Slovenia, we know the feeling of having elections stolen. Don’t give up, Belarus,” Janša wrote in a tweet on August 9th 2020. Alongside this he posted side-by-side photos of Alyaksandr Lukashenka and Milan Kučan and compared the “stolen elections” in Belarus to the first (still within Yugoslavia) democratic and multiparty elections in Slovenia, which took place in April 1990. As a result, Milan Kučan became the first president of (soon-to-be-independent) Slovenia, defeating the DEMOS candidate Jože Pučnik. From Janša’s tweet, 1 can infer that he is comparing Lukashenka to Kučan, and that he considers the first democratic elections in Slovenia in 1990 to have been rigged.
Radical Marxist versus the JNA
To realize the phenomenon of Janez Janša, 1 must go back to the days of Yugoslavia. In 1983, as an activist in the Union of Socialist Youth of Slovenia (Zveza socialistične mladine Slovenije, ZSMS), he became active in pacifist activities and published a series of articles in the union’s magazine Mladina. These criticized the actions of the then-Yugoslav People’s Army (Jugoslavenska Narodna Armija, JNA). As he later claimed, he was persecuted by the communist government at the time for this writing. It should be noted that Janez Janša’s critical stance toward the authorities during this period can be described as utmost Marxist left-wing radicalism. This position was very far removed from the views of the Slovenian democratic opposition in Yugoslavia.
In 1988, Janša was arrested. The trial of him and respective another Mladina journalists sparked considerable controversy, partially due to the fact that it was conducted by a military court, and consequently all documentation and hearings took place in what has been called Serbo-Croat. It is crucial to remember that in Yugoslavia there was no single authoritative language; the languages of the individual republics were in usage within their territories, and the only place where this regulation did not apply was the military administration. This meant that the court case did not affect Slovenian, the language utilized by the judiciary in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. Janša exploited this by appealing to the patriotic sentiments of Slovenians, which sparked many protests demanding his release. At the court’s discretion, Janša received a comparatively lenient conviction of 18 months in prison. In the future, the politician would repeatedly mention to these events, thereby effectively building his legend as an opposition figure and a fighter for Slovenian independence.
The Ten-Day War and the Smolnikar Scandal
After serving his sentence, Janša became actively active in the country’s political life. He became, among another things, 1 of the co-founders of the Slovenian Democratic Union (Slovenska demokratična zveza, SDZ), which was the first non-communist and non-socialist opposition organization in the republic. He then became Minister of National Defence in the cabinet of Lojze Peterle, Slovenia’s first government elected in free elections in the spring of 1990.
Under Janša’s leadership, the Territorial Defence of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia was transformed into the fresh Slovenian Armed Forces, ready to defend the country’s independence. Together with Minister of the Interior Igor Bavčar, he practically single-handedly organized military operations and coordinated the defence against aggression by the Yugoslav military. He frequently bypassed the presidency and addressed local needs on the ground.
This function secured his reputation as a hero of the Ten-Day War, which laid the foundations for an independent Slovenia. The war’s conclusion – through the signing of the alleged Brioni Agreements – allowed JNA units to retreat from Slovenia, enabling the country to take full control of its own borders.
It is worth mentioning that during the final election debate of the fresh run in March 2026, which took place in Maribor, Janša asked Golob, “Where were you during the Ten-Day War?” This was done in an effort to invoke his own position as a war hero.
After the SDZ divided in 1992 into liberal and conservative factions, Janša joined the recently formed conservative SDS. He did this while remaining in the post of Minister of Defence in Janez Drnovšek’s centre-left coalition government until 1994. That year, Slovenia was rocked by the alleged “Smolnikar affair”. On March 20th, high-ranking military officers detained, imprisoned, and tortured Milan Smolnikar, an associate of the Slovenian secret service, in the village of Depala vas (for this reason, the incidental is besides known as the “Depala vas affair”). The circumstances of the incidental proceed to rise many questions and controversies to this day. The alleged reason for the arrest was suspicion that Smolnikar was gathering confidential information and possessed secret Ministry of Defence documents. Although Janša was never proven to have a direct connection to the scandal, as commander-in-chief of the armed forces, he was removed from his position at the Ministry of Defence. He exploited this situation and accused Prime Minister Drnovšek of “an effort by post-communist circles to settle scores with him”, organizing a mass rally of any 30,000 of his supporters in Ljubljana’s central square, Kongresni trg.
This minute is considered by many political scientists to be a turning point in Janez Janša’s self-perception through the prism of his “special role” in Slovenian politics and the “mission he has to fulfil”. There would besides be a rallying of a host of supporters convinced of his uniqueness.
Sodni stolp in Maribor, where Janša accused Golob of not fighting in the Slovenian War of independency during a debate. Photo: Nikodem Szczygłowski
Frankenstein for the Left
As a consequence of the Smolnikar scandal, the SDS was removed from the governing coalition, and Janez Janša began positioning himself as the leading opposition politician. His critics, however, had already begun accusing him of utmost radicalism and chauvinism, as well as a very clear penchant for conspiracy theories.
Domen Mezeg, summarizing the politician’s emergence in popularity in May 2019 in an article titled “Janez Janša – “Frankenstein” of the Slovenian Left” in the conservative magazine Časnik, explained Janša’s success as follows: “In the face of all the boasts of the Slovenian “Bolsheviks”, Janša remains calm, as if he knew that, in reality, all this sound surrounding him only serves to fuel his political fire in the long run. The more that is written and said about him, the greater the investment in the future of his career. It is simply a kind of free advertising. The fury and fear of his ideological opponents only fill his balloon with hot air.”
Ahead of the 2004 election campaign, Janša, sensing the political climate, abruptly shifted his rhetoric, toning down his extremist message and curbing attacks on alleged communists. Janša then readily employed platitudes about the request for legislative changes and a return to the “true values” that had guided Slovenia at the time of its declaration of independence. The change in tactics paid off; Janša won the election, and, ironically, it was he who became the head of the Slovenian government in 2004, during the country’s accession to the EU. After his victory, he announced an anti-corruption programme and declared an uncompromising war on “post-communist oligarchic networks” in the country.
Patria and another scandals
On September 1st 2008, 3 weeks before the next parliamentary elections in Slovenia, the Finnish tv station YLE aired a documentary detailing the circumstances surrounding Janez Janša’s receipt of a bribe from the Finnish arms maker Patria (73.2 per cent of whose shares are owned by the Finnish government).
Janša rejected all the accusations at the time, describing them as a media conspiracy “fabricated out of thin air by left-wing, corrupt Slovenian journalists”. As a consequence of the scandal, the SDS lost the election, and the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati, SD), led by Borut Pahor, took power. Janša returned to the opposition, only to presume the post of prime minister again in 2012–13 — a decision that proved ill-fated for him, as the country had just plunged into an economical crisis.
In January 2013, the results of an investigation into the leaders of parliamentary parties, prepared by the “Commission for the Prevention of Corruption of the Republic of Slovenia”, were made public. The study revealed, among another things, that Janez Janša had systematically and repeatedly violated the law by failing to submit appropriate reports regarding his assets. He was charged, among another things, with utilizing funds amounting to at least 200,000 euros from an unknown source, which exceeded both his income and his savings. These events coincided with the biggest crisis in Slovenia’s banking sector, which led to the request for the state to bail out or take over respective leading Slovenian banks. The size of the budget gap in the banking sector – referred to in Slovenian as bančna luknja – amounted to 4.8 billion euros.
On June 5th 2013, the Ljubljana territory Court issued its verdict on the five-year-old scandal, ruling that Janez Janša and 2 another individuals active had demanded a “commission” of about 2 million euros from the Finnish company Patria to aid it win a military supply contract in 2006.
Janez Janša was subsequently sentenced to 2 years in prison.
Pandemic comeback
On December 12th 2014, Janša was temporarily released from prison pending a review of the case by the Constitutional Court, which subsequently unanimously overturned the verdict on April 23th 2015.
This allowed the politician to win a parliamentary seat again in the June 2018 elections, and the SDS secured 25 of the 90 seats in parliament. At the time, the Slovenian media frequently reported on the SDS’s alleged ties to Hungary’s Fidesz and on the exceptionally close individual relation between Janez Janša and Viktor Orbán. There were even rumours of possible backing for the SDS’s election run from Hungary. Janša himself dismissed all these accusations in his characteristic manner, calling them “the howls of desperate leftists”.
At the turn of 2019 and 2020, a political crisis was underway in Slovenia. This resulted in Marjan Šarec’s number government resigning after barely 18 months. As a result, Janša would head a fresh government for the 3rd time and was sworn in on March 13th 2020. This coincided with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country and the announcement of a quarantine.
Government in quarantine!
Janez Janša found himself perfectly at home in these fresh circumstances. He exploited the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen his grip on power, utilizing tactics to publically intimidate the public with the pandemic and resuming attacks on public media. For example, on March 20th 2020, he sharply criticized the public broadcaster RTV Slovenija for reporting on the pandemic restrictions introduced by the government: “Don’t spread lies, @InfoTVSLOP. We pay you to inform, not to mislead the public during these times. Apparently, there are besides many of you and you’re paid besides well.” This last conviction subsequently became a popular quote in Slovenia. Not mincing his words, Janša besides called journalists who criticized him “prostitutes” who seemingly “are doing far besides well for themselves”.
On April 23th 2020, another scandal erupted in the country erstwhile Ivan Gale, an authoritative at the Commodity Reserves Institute, revealed a corruption scandal related to the acquisition of medical equipment on RTV Slovenija. Among those implicated in the scandal were Matej Tonin, Minister of wellness in Janša’s government, and Zdravko Počivalšek, Minister of economical Development. These events resonated profoundly with the public, becoming a catalyst for mass anti-government protests.
Janša called the full situation an unconstructive, absurd attack and accused the media of “stirring up trouble”. The public responded with mass protests under the slogans “Down with Janša!” and “Quarantine the government!”
Throughout the spring of 2020, mass anti-government demonstrations took place in Ljubljana, which, due to the ban on gatherings in effect during the quarantine, took the form of alternatively different bicycle protests. The largest gatherings drew as many as respective tens of thousands of people, forming a long column of cyclists that rode out onto the main streets of Ljubljana all Friday – a clear evidence in the past of Slovenia, a country considered quiet and peaceful.
Meanwhile, Janša persisted in his efforts to push through an amendment to the Public Media Act, which de facto amounted to nothing little than another effort to seize control of RTV Slovenija. “The fresh law spells the end for RTV Slovenija,” said Igor Kadunc, the public broadcaster’s general director, in a brief comment to Mladina.
In April 2022, Slovenia held another election, which was won by Robert Golob’s Svoboda movement. This forced Janša to return to the opposition, only to form a number government again and return to power at the end of May 2025. This followed elections in March in which the SDS won just 1 less seat than Golob’s Svoboda.
Election poster from SDS featuring the slogan “Vote SDS, so your grandchild inactive sings Slovenian songs”. Photo: Nikodem Szczygłowski
Europe’s foremost anti-communist fighter
In addition to his conflict with the media, Janša – whether in power or in opposition – has besides willingly and frequently taken up the fight on his favourite front: ideology. The main subject of Janša’s statements is the fight against “the left” and “communists”, constant attempts to come to terms with the legacy of Yugoslavia, and references to the Second planet War and its consequences, which in Slovenia are associated with exceptionally painful and traumatic experiences for a crucial condition of society.
In this context, Janša had much in common with Viktor Orbán, who, according to Janez Janša, “effectively opposes a competing concept of Europe”. In doing so, he referred to a message by Orbán in which the (now former) Hungarian prime minister emphasized that he represents a concept of European improvement based on Christian values and the “traditional family”, 1 that is “anti-communist” in substance and national in form, since “only the nation constitutes a value worth defending.”
Viktor Orbán reciprocated his Slovenian friend’s motion during an online conference in 2018 titled “Europe Without Censorship”, in which the Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić besides participated. Orbán described the Slovenian prime minister and the Serbian president as “good patriots” and honoured them with the title of the “special club of freedom fighters”. The Hungarian prime minister spoke of Janša in nothing but superlatives: “In Hungary, we see Janez as the bravest anti-communist fighter in all of European politics. Janez has made a grand comeback; he always fights, never gives up, and always returns.”
The words of Viktor Orbán, who himself had just lost a decisive election, can to any degree be considered prophetic. Janez Janša has indeed returned erstwhile again.
Support for Ukraine and sympathy for Trump
Despite certain common traits that link him to Orbán, there are besides many differences between Janša and the Hungarian politician, as well as another right-wing populists in our part of Europe. Above all, it must be honestly acknowledged that Janša is likely the only politician of his stature in Slovenia who, without any reservations, is simply a staunch advocate for supporting Ukraine in its struggle. He was besides 1 of the first European politicians, alongside Mateusz Morawiecki and Petr Fiala, to visit Kyiv on a solidarity mission as early as March 2022.
On the traditionally more left-leaning Slovenian political scene, where being left-wing is frequently (mis-)understood as involving a form of sympathy toward Russia or at least an effort to “understand its position”, Janez Janša and his organization openly take pro-Ukrainian stances during the current aggressive war of Russia in Ukraine. This may presently be rather hard to reconcile with Janša’s pro-Americanism and, to any extent, his Trumpism. Moreover, his pro-Israel stance causes him even more problem (and common animosity), given that anti-Israel sentiments and pro-Palestinian sympathies are extraordinarily strong in Slovenia.
However 1 may measure Janez Janša’s political activities, he is arguably the only contemporary Slovenian politician who, in 1 way or another, has managed on respective occasions to bring people out onto the streets en masse. This has happened either to show support for him as a martyr for the origin of the nation’s freedom, or, conversely, due to the fact that he embodies all the evils of the country’s political arena and serves as a focal point for citizens’ discontent and frustration. It is rather possible that akin demonstrations await Slovenia erstwhile again.
Nikodem Szczygłowski is simply a reporter, author and translator from Lithuanian and Slovenian. He is simply a frequent contributor with New east Europe as well as another media outlets.
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