After the working week begun with appointing SDS party’s president Janez Janša prime minister-designate, it ended with submitting a proposal of ministerial candidates. Therefore, now it is officially known what kind of a team Janša wants to lead Slovenia again with. There were speculations about the names for some time, so there are not many surprises.
SDS president Janez Janša has been appointed this week to form a new government following the resignation of former prime minister Marjan Šarec. He had signed a coalition agreement with the parties of SMC, NSi and DeSUS, and coordinated a list of ministerial candidates. While the NSi and DeSUS candidates were known for several days and the parties were not hiding them, SDS and SMC were more secretive.
According to some information from coalition parties, Janša made final coordination with the party presidents Friday evening, thus submitting the list to the National Assembly quite late.
Helena Jaklitsch a new name on the list
According to a staffing agreement, SDS will take over seven departments. It has been known for several days that the party wants MP Anže Logar at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which will play a key role in Slovenia’s upcoming EU presidency.
Andrej Šircelj as a candidate for a finance minister was also expected, and if the government team in the parliament is confirmed, the minister of the environment and spatial planning will be Andrej Vizjak, who was the minister in both past Janša-led governments.
Another deputy is becoming a minister – Zvonko Černač. Although he was first mentioned as a possible minister of internal affairs, he immediately denied it. He is now the SDS’s choice for a minister without portfolio responsible for economic development and European affairs.
However, it wasn’t clear right to the end who the candidate for the new minister without a portfolio for Slovenian diaspora would be. It is a historian and publicist Helena Jaklitsch, known for some of her appearances and notes on the fate of the Home Guard members killed after the Second World War, including years ago in Kočevski Rog.
Hojs a minister for the second time in Janša’s government, but proposed by another party
The choice of a minister of internal affairs also stands out a mile. Aleš Hojs was a head of the Ministry of Defence in the second government of Janez Janša, but was an NSi member at that time and in the NSi quota. In 2014, he as the party’s vice-president ran for the president against then-president Ljudmila Novak, who he was critical of as he was in favour of connecting the party more with SDS, while Novak wanted to shake off the SDS’s shadow.
Hojs failed to lead the party, receiving only 27 percent of the vote. In 2016, he was expelled from NSi for allegedly damaging the party’s reputation, and he ran on the SDS list in the 2018 parliamentary elections. He is also the president of the rightist Association for the Values of Slovenian Independence (VSO) and the director of Nova Hiša broadcasting the Nova24TV television program.
There was also quite a speculation on the potential candidates for the minister of culture, with jurisdiction also over the media. It was only in the past days that it became clear – Vasko Simoniti is coming back, a culture minister in the first Janša government.
SMC was also quite mysterious right till the end. It was clear that the party’s president Zdravko Počivalšek wanted to continue running the economy sector. The rest were discussed in the past days. The last name on the list is Boštjan Koritnik, a jurist who will face the Ministry of Public Administration.
Simona Kustec, known to the public as a head of SMC’s MPs in the past term, is a candidate for a minister of education, science and sport. A former secretary general of the government led by Miro Cerar and a current director general of the Environment Agency, Lilijana Kozlovič, will take over the Ministry of Justice if the ministerial list receives the support of the National Assembly.
SMC also had three ministers besides Počivalšek in the government of Marjan Šarec, who resigned and prematurely ended his government’s term. The foreign minister was Miro Cerar, the environment department was led by Simon Zajc and the Ministry of Labour by Ksenija Klampfer.
SMC thus gets the same number of ministers in the new coalition with the SDS, NSi and DeSUS parties, and additionally the National Assembly president as the MEPs elected the current head of SMC’s MPs, Igor Zorčič to this position on Thursday evening in a secret ballot.
Two days before the International Women’s Day, a largely male candidate list was submitted
An SMC proposition contains a half of the female candidates with Kustec and Kozlovič. The third female is a DeSUS president Alexandra Pivec, who wants to keep the agricultural sector. DeSUS has also gets a health department that will be managed by Tomaž Gantar.
He already was a minister in the governments of Janez Janša and Alenka Bratušek between February 2012 and November 2014, and resigned. As a result, Pivec has been asked quite a few questions these days, but claims that they have political support for the agreed projects and that Gantar will be up to the task.
NSi, however, is sending the youngest team to the government, consisting of as many as three former public relations representatives. The current president of the party, Matej Tonin, will take over the defence sector, the deputy Jernej Vrtovec the infrastructure and the expert associate of the deputy group, Janez Cigler Kralj, the Ministry of Labour.
Hearings before the relevant parliamentary bodies will be held next week from Tuesday to Friday, followed by a vote on the new – third government of Janez Janša.
Source: STA