STA, 26 April 2022 - Prime Minister Janez Janša alleged in a series of posts on Twitter on Tuesday that Robert Golob, who defeated him in Sunday's general election with his Freedom Movement, is pro-Russian, as he reacted to foreign media reports about the election.

"You really called those pro Russian guys "liberals"? Check your sources, please," Janša tweeted this afternoon, tagging a number of foreign media, including The New York Times, Reuters and Fox News.

He described the Freedom Party, which foreign media designated as centrist and liberal, as "pro-Russian," backing his claims with alleged pro-Russian positions of the party's backers that he said had an "anti-European, pro-Russian background".

You really called those pro Russian guys “liberals”? Check your sources, please. @nytimes @FT @cnni @FoxNews @euronews @dwnews @AFP @FRANCE24 @CBCNews @Reuters https://t.co/7m1LdDvCTQ pic.twitter.com/UA02d7e6Hj

— Janez Janša (@JJansaSDS) April 26, 2022

This included a photo of Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković, who endorsed Golob, receiving a medal from Putin several years ago, and a statement by Freedom Movement vice-president Marta Kos in a 20 March interview that it was in Slovenia's interest to have normal relations with Russia.

The Twitter activity comes after Janša aired similar views on election day as he responded to a tweet by the European People's Party (EPP), which caused a stir when it said that it was "worried about the possible Russian interference in the Slovenian elections, which is clearly a consequence of Slovenia's firm & unequivocal support for Ukraine."

The EPP did not explain its position any further.

On Sunday Janša thanked the EPP as he noted that "powerful politicians, decorated by Putin's medals, try to push Slovenia back to the Russian sphere of influence."

He said there was "a strong pro-Russian network in Slovenia with exceptional media, financial and political power. This network sets up a new political party before each election. This time it is called the Freedom Movement".

Hours after polls closed on Sunday, Janša congratulated Golob on victory and said the SDS was always willing to work together with political players for the common good of Slovenia.

STA, 26 April 2022 - Arts and culture NGOs called on Tuesday for the restoration of the reputation of the culture ecosystem as a whole after it was undermined by the outgoing government, and for support of NGOs and freelance culture workers. The head of the National Council for Culture expects an action plan with clear culture-policy goals.

Putting forward its expectations in the face of the pending change in power, the Asociacija group of arts and culture NGOs and freelancers said it wants the new government to secure stability, development and professionalisation, as well as improve the social situation of self-employed culture workers.

Asociacija told the STA the culture ecosystem needed to be built thoughtfully, in a sustainable fashion and "returned to the centre of people's lives".

It said it was necessary to immediately address and fix "the inappropriate attitude toward nongovernmental culture - NGOs and the self-employed, which has permeated almost all areas of the Culture Ministry's activities".

The issues highlighted include "the problematic attitude in the adopted resolution on the National Programme for Culture", the damage and injustices seen in funding for creativity and media content, non-transparent appointments of commissions, and the undermining of NGOs' access to infrastructure and of status requests by freelances.

The NGOs feel that the results of the election could herald a change for the better, with the parties forming the new government having shown some understanding of the issues at hand at the only election campaign debate dedicated to the culture sector.

The head of the National Council for Culture Uršula Cetinski expects the new culture minister to draw up a four-year action plan with clear cultural policy objectives and submit it for public debate within 100 days of taking office.

The adoption of important laws, such as the act on museums and performing arts, could solve many problems, said Cetinski, who also called for a reform of the law on the implementation of public interest in culture.

The boss of Slovenia's pre-eminent arts centre Cankarjev Dom moreover pointed to a host of projects that should be seen as a priority directly by the prime minister, among them the construction of the new national library, "the brain of the country and the nation, which we have been building since 1989 and spent EUR 29.3 million on until 2007".

The restoration of Ljubljana Drama Theatre and the securing of proper premises for the Museum of Natural History should not be delayed either, according to Cetinski.

She is not sure the Culture Ministry should remain in charge of the media segment, noting that "in Europe, some countries are resolving the complex and rapidly changing media landscape under the auspices of economy ministries, which supposedly allows for greater ideological neutrality".

"The Culture Ministry, of course, participates in the financing of deficit content. Perhaps a shift in this segment would give the ministry more space to deal with art that is of particular importance," Cetinski argued.

STA, 25 April 2022 - The highest turnout in Sunday's general election was recorded in the Ljubljana Centre electoral unit, where it reached 73.6%, and the lowest in the Ptuj electoral unit at 64.4%. Among electoral districts, the Škofja Loka 2 district reached the highest turnout with 78.49%, whereas Lendava saw the lowest turnout at 56.46%.

The National Electoral Commission's (DVK) latest unofficial partial data shows that 1,185,161 voters cast their vote in the election, or 69.83% of the electorate.

Zemljevid volilne udeležbe. Povsod po Sloveniji zares visoka, najbolj v zaledju Ljubljane, najmanj pa na obrobju. A je geografski vzorec podoben kot na prejšnjih volitvah. #Volitve2022 pic.twitter.com/qR6CBFU1vB

— Jernej Tiran (@jernejec) April 25, 2022

According to the Ljubljana - Moste Polje local electoral commission, the voting at the Senožeti polling station had to be extended by 30 minutes and by 10 minutes at Bizovik as they ran out of ballots due to a high turnout but continued without any further complications.

Polls were also open yesterday at 30 Slovenian embassies and consulates abroad. Diplomatic missions and consular posts have reported no voting issues so far.

In line with relevant rules, local electoral commissions are counting today the votes received from Slovenia by mail. The final count for ballots received from abroad will be carried out on 3 May after 12am.

The turnout in the previous general election in 2018 was at 52.64%, almost 20 percentage points lower as this year's. In light of the high voter turnout in the latest election, which is the second-highest in Slovenia's history, the DVK has commended the work of electoral committees.

STA, 25 April 2022 - As many as 36 women have been elected to the 90-seat National Assembly, which translates in 40% of all MPs, a record figure ever since Slovenia gained independence. The Freedom Movement, the election winner, leads the way - it has not only the largest number of women MPs but more than half of its elected candidates are women.

According to the unofficial partial results of Sunday's election, the Freedom Movement will have 22 women MPs, which is nearly 54% of the party's deputies.

A total of three women were elected to parliament on the slate of the SocDems, which came in fourth, accounting for almost 43% of the SD's deputy group.

The fifth-placed Left has two women out of its five elected MPs (40%).

The two parties of the outgoing coalition that have made it to parliament have below 30% women MPs.

The second-placed Democrats (SDS) and the third-placed New Slovenia (NSi) have seven and two women MPs, respectively.

The SDS's share is thus nearly 26%, whereas the NSi has the lowest share of women MPs among all the parties that will be in the next parliament - 25%.

Prior to this election, the highest number of women MPs in Slovenia, 32, was recorded at the end of the 2011-2014 and 2014-2018 terms.

The lowest number of women MPs was meanwhile seen during the 1996-2000 and 2004-2008 terms, when there were only eleven female MPs.

In the term that is now coming to an end, 22 women were originally elected to parliament, and at the end of the term, Slovenia had 26 women MPs due to various reshuffles.

STA, 25 April - The 8 March Institute (Inštitut 8. marec) has filed to parliament some 10,000 signatures in support of its bill aimed at repealing several government-sponsored laws the NGO finds harmful. Its head Nika Kovač said she expected the new government to support the bill as its first move, and proceed to address the situation at public broadcaster RTV Slovenija,.

Kristina Kranjc, a member of the NGO's programme board, said the bill features 11 proposals that will change some laws passed under the Janez Janša government.

If passed, the bill will prevent Uber from entering the Slovenian market, enable environmental NGOs to promote the interests of nature, and enable police to work independently from politics.

The Freedom Movement, the election winner, has assured the NGO even before the election that it would support the bill.

Tija Jakič, another member of the board, said that the NGO hoped that cooperation between parliamentary parties and the civil society would continue.

The NGO has managed to collect 15,000 verified signatures, whereas only 5,000 are needed for a civil group to file a bill to the National Assembly.

STA, 25 April 2022 - The Freedom Movement, a liberal party formed just months ago with a promise to end the rule of the Janez Janša government, won Sunday's general election with a landslide as Slovenians turned out massively to vote for change after a turbulent two years marked by Covid restrictions and growing polarisation.

With almost all the ballots counted, the Freedom Movement won 34.5% of the vote, which gives it 41 seats in the 90-member National Assembly, the most won by any one party to date. Janša's Democratic Party (SDS) won 23.5%, down almost 1.5 point from the 2018 election, but gained two seats to 27.

This is as only five parties made the 4% threshold to enter parliament, the lowest number since independence. New Slovenia (NSi), Janša's coalition partner in the outgoing government, garnered 6.9% to win eight seats, one more than in the previous election.

The Social Democrats (SD) mustered 6.7% of the vote to win seven seats, down three from the previous election, and the Left just managed to squeeze in with 4.4% of the vote to win five seats, having halved its tally.

The result means Slovenia is on a course to get a centre-left government with a comfortable majority as Robert Golob, the leader the Freedom Movement, is expected to form a coalition with the SD and the Left, which would have a total of 53 seats.

"Today dreams have come true, not only our dreams but also those of a large part of Slovenia," said Golob, addressing his voters remotely as he is self-isolating due to Covid-19, adding: "We believe power in fact is owned by the people and not the parties that have been usurping it for the past 30 years."

Both Golob and other centre-left party leaders highlighted the high voter turnout, at 69.7%, as a show of how much people wanted to see the end of the centre-right Janša government, which was often criticised for having used the Covid-pandemic as a pretext to curtail personal freedoms and attack independent institutions such as the judiciary and the media.

Civil society has also contributed to the high turnout, Golob said, adding that without having such a dedicated civil society in the last year and a half Slovenia would not have seen freedom.

Both him and the other centre-left parties have said repeatedly that their first move would be to support a civil-society-sponsored omnibus bill aimed at repealing what they see as detrimental laws and measures adopted by the outgoing government.

Janša congratulated Golob and his Freedom Movement on the victory but assessed the SDS come out stronger due to a higher number of seats in parliament, having won numerous electoral districts, including those where it had never won before such as part of Velenje, also known as the red fort for its traditional support of left parties.

He too hailed the high voter turnout, but said the election showed people's dissatisfaction with the opposition, which he said was "practically swept out of the parliament".

Golob, a 55-year-old energy expert from the western region of Primorska, decided to challenge Janša at the polls after he failed to win support late last year for another term as CEO of GEN-I after 15 years at the helm of the indirectly state-owned energy trader.

He took over a small green party and renamed it Freedom Movement at a congress in late January, along with several professionals who lost or quit their careers under the current government, with a promise to focus on green agenda, open society, normalisation, and modern welfare state.

As a party coming out of nowhere to win the election, the Freedom Movement follows a pattern seen ahead of each parliamentary election since 2011, when Positive Slovenia, a party formed by Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković that also included Golob won but failed to form a government.

In this election two such parties were squeezed out of parliament; the SMC, which won the 2018 election but has since changed its name to Concretely under outgoing Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek won just 3.43% as part of the alliance of five parties called Connecting Slovenia, and the LMŠ party, which came in second in 2018 to have its leader Marjan Šarec form a minority government, now won 3.72%.

Also squeezed out were SAB, the party of another former PM Alenka Bratušek, Pensioners' Party (DeSUS), which has made part of every government coalition since 2000, and the National Party (SNS), which returned to parliament in the 2018 election after being squeezed out in 2011.

The only party leader to offer his resignation over the poor showing was Luka Mesec, the leader of the Left, who announced he will seek a vote of confidence over what he described as a bad result.

STA, 24 April 2022 - Partial results after more than 80% of the votes have been counted suggest the Freedom Movement won the election with 33.7% of the vote, more than nine percentage points ahead of the ruling Democratic Party (SDS), which is at 24.5%. Three more parties have made it to parliament. Turnout was at a relatively high 62%.

The coalition New Slovenia currently ranks at 7% and the opposition Social Democrats (SD) and Left at 6.6% and exactly 4%, respectively.

Connecting Slovenia, an alliance of five parties, and the opposition Marjan Šarec List (LMŠ) are each about half a percentage point below the threshold.

Under the current calculations, the Freedom Movement would get 40 seats in the 90-member legislature, the SDS 29, the NSi 8, the SD 7 and the Left 4.

On balance, the centre-left would have 51 seats in parliament and the centre-right 37, with the two remaining seats reserved for the Hungarian and Italian minority.

STA, 24 April 2022 - The Freedom Movement, a new party formed by former energy executive Robert Golob, won Sunday's general election in Slovenia with 35.8% of the vote or 42 seats in the 90-member National Assembly, exit polls suggest. The incumbent ruling Democrats (SDS) won 22.5% as only three other parties apparently made it to parliament.

Slovenia’s New “Freedom Movement” Party Focuses on Green Transition, Open Society

The only other of the current ruling coalition parties to have made it to parliament is New Slovenia (NSi), which exit polls, conducted by Mediana for the public broadcaster TV Slovenija and commercial POP TV, show won 6.8%.

The SocDems and the Left, which are likely to form a coalition with the Freedom Movement, got 6.6% and 4.4% of the vote, respectively, exit polls show, which however do not include voters who cast their ballots in the early election, where the turnout was a high 7.7%.

Given the exit polls, the SDS won 26 seats, the NSi eight, the SocDems seven and the Left five.

The parties formed by two former PMs, Marjan Šarec and Alenka Bratušek, are shown to have been squeezed out of parliament, as has the alliance that includes the party of the outgoing Economy Minister Zdravko Počivalšek. The LMŠ won 3.8%, the alliance Connecting Slovenia 3.2% and Bratušek's SAB 2.9%.

STA, 24 April 2022 - Parliamentary Speaker Igor Zorčič told the STA as he cast a ballot in Velike Malence near Brežice today that citizens always made the right decision in election. Prime Minister and Democrats (SDS) head Janez Janša, who voted in Šentilj near Velenje, expressed a similar view. Several other party heads were optimistic as well.

Zorčič expects a tight outcome today. He said the election campaign had been relatively broad, as a large number of parties participated, while content-wise it had been "rather weak".

As a result, voters will vote primarily for or against the ruling coalition rather than based on contents, he believes. "But regardless, I'm sure that citizens always make the right decision," he said.

Janša expects a high turnout today, which he believes will be good. When election is democratic and people express their will freely, every result is a good result, Janša said.

Commenting on the election campaign, the PM said that for the government this had been a parallel activity and that it was different for the opposition. "Although if I look at my colleagues from the opposition I see they are tired, some even ill, so it must be something else."

He said he would have liked serious media to have made a comparison during the campaign between the first and second parts of the past term, "because we had government only in the second part of the term". He believes the campaign had been primarily a battle over who will take the credit for the results of the second part of the government term.

Today's election will decide how Slovenia will develop not only in the next four years, but in the next decade, he said, adding that many projects were planned and that it would be a shame if they were suspended.

SD head Tanja Fajon believes many people would turn out today. "Which means we all hope for a new beginning."

She said the campaign had been demanding, that her team had worked hard all along, was well prepared and had given its best. "We will get nervous in the afternoon, but in a good way. I'm very optimistic," she said.

New Slovenia (NSi) head Matej Tonin was also upbeat, as he cast his ballot, saying that today was a festival of democracy, when "we have the opportunity to express our will on what kind of future we want". He said he was optimistic about the results of this election as well as about the future.

Marjan Šarec, the head of the LMŠ party, was also in good spirits today. He said the campaign had been tough and that he was happy with the work done by his team.

SAB head Alenka Bratušek said she was happy to see more people vote than ever before. She assessed the election campaign as demanding. "There have been more debates than ever, but we've still travelled several thousand kilometres around Slovenia, shook many hands," she said.