The Social Democrats are facing a disastrous financial situation. This is pathological symptomatology that could also be observed in the former influential left-wing parties LDS and Zares, warns the editor-in-chief of Siol, Peter Jančič. Namely, the same pattern of financial impotence or over-indebtedness due to non-payment of election campaigns can be seen in all three of the parties. “LDS and Zares have still not paid 80,380 and 22,771 euros of accounts of state election campaigns, while the SD party still has 537,258 euros of accounts from the local campaigns.” According to Jančič, these accounts of the Social Democrats party had not been settled a year after the elections and not even five years after the elections. To this day, however, they remain “by far the biggest financial patient among all parties.”
The editor of Siol, Peter Jančič, warns that all three of the aforementioned parties, meaning the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD), the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije – LDS), and the Zares party (Really), should already be bankrupt due to the outstanding financial obligations. In fact, the LDS and Zares actually are bankrupt, as they have long since moved away from parliamentary politics, while the Social Democrats remain active for now, but the past is like a shadow, dragging behind them. However, they are alleviating their financial difficulties with the real estate heritage they got from the previous regime. Namely, they pledge their real estate in exchange for cash loans and thus make money. The party’s debts are said to have already appeared during the rule of Borut Pahor, or rather at the time of his victory in the parliamentary elections.
Tanja Fajon was already a prominent member of the party at the time, but she did not run from it due to the debt, unlike some people from the LDS and Zares parties, who quickly left their sinking ships. One of the defectors from the LDS party was also Robert Golob, the latest “new face” of Slovenian left-wing politics, who fled to Positive Slovenia (Pozitivna Slovenija), where he joined Zoran Janković, and then moved to the Party of Alenka Bratušek (Stranka Alenke Bratušek – SAB), where he joined Alenka Bratušek. Many people were mad at Golob back at the time when LDS was still a strong, noteworthy party. The reason for it was the problems with the energy sector when he was still in the position of Secretary of State, as well as the suspicions of him profiting by performing incompatible functions. One of his loudest critics was Jožef Školč. Recently, Golob has also taken over a fairly new party from the former Minister Jure Leben.
However, the latter cannot exactly pride itself on big financial reserves for the campaign. However, the “wonder boy of the energy sector” obtained the needed funds in a different way. The public got to know the gentleman because of the wasteful promotion of green energy, which was charged to the state-owned company in the pre-election period, as it was played in the mainstream media, which means that it was the cost of the taxpayers. We are talking about an entity that maintains a monopoly on the market in terms of the sale of electricity from the state nuclear power plant – the Gen-I energy company. Before Golob’s formal announcement regarding his entry into the election campaign, according to all public opinion polls, the party with the most miserable financial situation, meaning the SD party, was the political option that could have collected the lion’s share of the votes of the centre-left voters.
The SD party does not like new faces, as they take away their electoral votes and, consequently, their subsidies
A good election result would help the SD party, the successor of the League of Communists of Slovenia, fix its catastrophic situation. Namely, the monthly subsidies that the parties will receive for their work depend on the number of their voters, and this is the main financial source of political parties. However, their hopes to fix the catastrophic financial situation are buried over and over again by the so-called new faces: first, it was Zoran Janković, then Miro Cerar, and at the last election, it was Marjan Šarec. At this point, however, it is Golob who just might get in their way. From the publicly available information, it is clear what the balance sheet results of individual party options were for 2020. And because the Social Democrats had higher revenues than expenditures in 2020, the balance sheet deficit of the political option decreased slightly compared to 2019.
What is particularly interesting, however, is the fact that the SD party is the only one among the noteworthy parties who found itself in the red. Most parties are in a positive financial situation, and this year we are looking forward to three major elections. Party reserves will definitely be earmarked for campaigns, and on an annual basis, they are all likely to operate at a loss. Some will certainly also dig into past reserves and thus fall into the red, but their loss will certainly be smaller compared to the one produced by the Social Democrats. As is well known, the costs of past election campaigns have greatly worsened the financial situation of the LDS and SD parties. We are talking about millions of euros in exceeded costs here. Victories in the case of the last local and state elections bring subsidies (from voters). Financially, the ruling Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS), led by Janez Janša, is doing the best.
How Fajon’s party “feeds” its creditors with empty hopes instead of money
“We are trying to reach an agreement with everyone we owe money to. We pay according to our abilities. We cannot do everything right away, but we will settle it,” the SD party’s General Secretary, Uroš Jauševec, said ten years ago, misleading the companies that criticised the company due to its unpaid bills. At the time, the Social Democrats owed half a million euros for running their campaigns. And the outstanding bills remained the same not only for one year but for another five years. And even four years ago, when the last National Assembly elections took place, these bills were still not settled. They even boasted that they managed to pay the bills for 2014, but not the ones older than that. So, they still have more than 63 thousand euros of debt left. The Social Democrats are the only party in the National Assembly that has been operating with a deep debt for a decade now.
Jančič also shared his story from 2011, when he called the company EMO-ETT from Celje, whom the SD party still owed more than 12 thousand euros at the time, which the party spent on its election campaign. According to the company, they even considered suing the Social Democrats as they stopped picking up the phone. Jauševec tried to make excuses and claimed that this was the first time they had worked with the company in question, while they had worked with the other companies before, and they could tell you that the Social Democrats always settled their bills. He also denied that the party was trying to avoid communicating with the Celje company, emphasising that they were getting many calls from different creditors. But even in that year, they did not settle the bills of the company in question. The LDS party was even visited by bailiffs in recent years, but they did not manage to get much from them, as there was nothing to take that would amount to their debt.
The SD party should be sent into bankruptcy, and their bills should be settled, but they are being saved by the legal gap
This is the first time that the Social Democrats have entered the election year and the period of wasteful election campaigns without the outstanding costs of pre-election promotional activities from ten years ago. Namely, they covered their debts by taking out bank loans, and at the same time, they also mortgaged the real estate in their possession, which they inherited from their “ancestors.” Igor Šoltes, a former prominent LDS politician, also pointed out when he was still the head of the Court of Audit that the Political Parties Act has a legal gap, as there are no provisions on the bankruptcy and liquidation of a political party, and consequently, the area of creditors’ rights remains unregulated. Just like Golob, Šoltes also changed parties, as this year, he is participating in the SD party’s campaign, where he is leading the party’s council for the judiciary. “The judiciary could fill the legal gap and prevent the bankrupt parties from trying to convince people that they are the best option for running the country, at least until they settle tier unpaid bills,” Jančič believes.
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