The fourth government of Janez Janša is becoming a reality in Slovenia

“The National Assembly has just taken an important 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 new prime minister by a vote of 51 to 36.

Will this end the government crisis in Slovenia, where, two months after the March elections, there is still no government, and Robert Golob’s attempt to form a centre-left coalition has failed?

Janez Janša hopes that in the coming days, or within two weeks at the latest, Slovenia will finally have “a complete team that will work toward a bright future for Slovenia”. As he stated, his SDS party has “some experience regarding how coalitions function from previous 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 determine whether this will be a term “in which we seek common ground for the good of Slovenia, or whether they will simply attack and exclude us, just as they did when 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 three more votes than the size of his coalition: the SDS, the bloc of Christian Democratic parties such as NSi, SLS, Fokus, and the Democrats led by his former colleague Anže Logar. This group also has the support of the opposition Resnica (Truth) party, whose leader Zoran Stevanović had already been elected speaker of parliament. Janša himself firmly rejects allegations of vote-buying, expressing concern that this might be a matter of “some sort of inter-party-political manoeuvring”. In his view, “it is likely a matter 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 new government will have 14 ministries.

Janez Janša will head the Slovenian government for the fourth time. Barring some extraordinary surprise, this is a reality with which Slovenians will have to come to terms. This will be a difficult experience for both a significant portion of the country’s polarized society and the political scene. This is especially true 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. Numerous commentators accuse the parties of the new 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 some voters, have falsely suggested they would not join a government with Janša. Logar – a former party colleague of Janša and foreign minister in his previous government – repeated on multiple occasions while forming his own party, Demokrati, that he had little in common with Janša, thereby attempting to draw more moderate and intellectual right-wing voters away 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 statement during the election campaign 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 have to admit that this politician, who has held various roles in Slovenian politics since the very beginning of Slovenia’s independence, has simply once again 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 term 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 great surprise, as many political scientists had predicted such a scenario much earlier.

Janez Janša will begin his new term as head of government in the face of fierce opposition from opposition parties, labour unions, and NGOs – and this, in turn, is 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 Party (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 speaker who often resorts to less-than-diplomatic phrases. He loves witty retorts, which he shares far and wide often 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, one 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 understand the phenomenon of Janez Janša, one 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 involved 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 regime 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 extreme 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 several other Mladina journalists sparked considerable controversy, partly because it was conducted by a military court, and consequently all documentation and hearings took place in what has been called Serbo-Croat. It is important to remember that in Yugoslavia there was no single official language; the languages of the individual republics were in use within their territories, and the only place where this rule did not apply was the military administration. This meant that the court case did not involve Slovenian, the language used by the judiciary in the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. Janša exploited this by appealing to the patriotic sentiments of Slovenians, which sparked numerous protests demanding his release. At the court’s discretion, Janša received a relatively lenient sentence of 18 months in prison. In the future, the politician would repeatedly refer 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 involved in the country’s political life. He became, among other things, one of the co-founders of the Slovenian Democratic Union (Slovenska demokratična zveza, SDZ), which was the first non-communist and non-socialist opposition party 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 new 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 often bypassed the presidency and addressed local needs on the ground.

This role 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 so-called Brioni Agreements – allowed JNA units to withdraw 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 recent campaign in March 2026, which took place in Maribor, Janša asked Golob, “Where were you during the Ten-Day War?” This was done in an attempt to invoke his own status as a war hero.

After the SDZ split in 1992 into liberal and conservative factions, Janša joined the newly 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 so-called “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 incident is also known as the “Depala vas affair”). The circumstances of the incident continue to raise numerous 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 attempt by post-communist circles to settle scores with him”, organizing a mass rally of some 30,000 of his supporters in Ljubljana’s central square, Kongresni trg.

This moment 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 also be a rallying of a host of supporters convinced of his uniqueness.

 

Frankenstein for the Left

As a result 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 extreme radicalism and chauvinism, as well as a very clear penchant for conspiracy theories.

Domen Mezeg, summarizing the politician’s rise 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 noise 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 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, suddenly shifted his rhetoric, toning down his radical message and curbing attacks on alleged communists. Janša then readily employed platitudes about the need 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 other scandals

On September 1st 2008, three weeks before the next parliamentary elections in Slovenia, the Finnish television station YLE aired a documentary detailing the circumstances surrounding Janez Janša’s receipt of a bribe from the Finnish arms manufacturer 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 result 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 assume the post of prime minister again in 2012–13 — a move that proved ill-fated for him, as the country had just plunged into an economic 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 report revealed, among other things, that Janez Janša had systematically and repeatedly violated the law by failing to submit proper reports regarding his assets. He was charged, among other things, with using 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 need for the state to bail out or take over several leading Slovenian banks. The size of the budget hole in the banking sector – referred to in Slovenian as bančna luknja – amounted to 4.8 billion euros.

On June 5th 2013, the Ljubljana District Court issued its verdict on the five-year-old scandal, ruling that Janez Janša and two other individuals involved had demanded a “commission” of approximately two million euros from the Finnish company Patria to help it win a military supply contract in 2006.

Janez Janša was subsequently sentenced to two 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 personal relationship between Janez Janša and Viktor Orbán. There were even rumours of possible funding for the SDS’s election campaign 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 minority government resigning after barely 18 months. As a result, Janša would head a new government for the third 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 new circumstances. He exploited the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen his grip on power, using tactics to publicly 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 too many of you and you’re paid too well.” This last sentence subsequently became a popular quote in Slovenia. Not mincing his words, Janša also called journalists who criticized him “prostitutes” who apparently “are doing far too well for themselves”.

On April 23th 2020, another scandal erupted in the country when Ivan Gale, an official at the Commodity Reserves Institute, revealed a corruption scandal related to the purchase of medical equipment on RTV Slovenija. Among those implicated in the scandal were Matej Tonin, Minister of Health in Janša’s government, and Zdravko Počivalšek, Minister of Economic Development. These events resonated deeply with the public, becoming a catalyst for mass anti-government protests.

Janša called the entire 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 rather unusual bicycle protests. The largest gatherings drew as many as several tens of thousands of people, forming a long column of cyclists that rode out onto the main streets of Ljubljana every Friday – a clear record in the history 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 less than another attempt to seize control of RTV Slovenija. “The new 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 minority government again and return to power at the end of May 2025. This followed elections in March in which the SDS won just one fewer seat than Golob’s Svoboda.

 

Europe’s foremost anti-communist fighter

In addition to his battle with the media, Janša – whether in power or in opposition – has also willingly and frequently taken up the fight on his favourite front: ideology. The main theme 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 World War and its consequences, which in Slovenia are associated with exceptionally painful and traumatic experiences for a significant portion 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 statement by Orbán in which the (now former) Hungarian prime minister emphasized that he represents a concept of European development based on Christian values and the “traditional family”, one 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 gesture during an online conference in 2018 titled “Europe Without Censorship”, in which the Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić also 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 some extent be considered prophetic. Janez Janša has indeed returned once again.

Support for Ukraine and sympathy for Trump

Despite certain common traits that link him to Orbán, there are also many differences between Janša and the Hungarian politician, as well as other 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 a staunch advocate for supporting Ukraine in its struggle. He was also one 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 often (mis-)understood as involving a form of sympathy toward Russia or at least an attempt to “understand its position”, Janez Janša and his party openly take pro-Ukrainian stances during the current aggressive war of Russia in Ukraine. This may currently be quite difficult to reconcile with Janša’s pro-Americanism and, to some extent, his Trumpism. Moreover, his pro-Israel stance causes him even more trouble (and mutual animosity), given that anti-Israel sentiments and pro-Palestinian sympathies are extraordinarily strong in Slovenia.

However one may assess Janez Janša’s political activities, he is arguably the only contemporary Slovenian politician who, in one way or another, has managed on several occasions to bring people out onto the streets en masse. This has happened either to show support for him as a martyr for the cause of the nation’s freedom, or, conversely, because he embodies all the evils of the country’s political arena and serves as a focal point for citizens’ discontent and frustration. It is quite possible that similar demonstrations await Slovenia once again.

Nikodem Szczygłowski is a reporter, writer and translator from Lithuanian and Slovenian. He is a frequent contributor with New Eastern Europe as well as other media outlets.