Has another “new face” phenomenon already begun to emerge in this year’s elections to the European parliament? Vesna’s third place among the parties raises a number of questions – in a similar way, ten years ago, Kardelj’s grandson, Igor Šoltes, became a Member of the European Parliament with a new party called Verjamem (I believe), which is practically nowhere to be found today, and Šoltes has long since defected to his “mother” party – the Social Democrats (Socialni demokrati – SD), the proud successor of the League of Communists of Slovenia (ZKS).
Something similar is also true of the Vesna – the Green Party (Vesna – zelena stranka), which had abundant media support, probably in order to prevent the votes lost by the Freedom Movement party (Gibanje Svoboda) and the Social Democrats from going “to waste”. This is why they chose Vladimir Prebilič, who has been the mayor of Kočevje since 2010, but who also ran in the presidential elections and is therefore a recognisable “new face,” as the first name on their candidate list. The core of the “new faces” technology is that it puts people with a likeable image, fresh speech and good visibility in the forefront, but on the condition that they are still “blank pages” in national politics (although this is not always the case). In this way, the old godfathers have brought a whole bunch of people into politics who were “new faces” in the beginning, such as Zoran Janković, Marjan Šarec, Miro Cerar Jr., and now Robert Golob.
Prebilič, a professor of history and geography who later obtained a PhD in defence studies, is considered a very ambitious politician. Professionally, he is an associate professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences (FDV) at the Department of Defence Studies, where former MEP Klemen Grošelj is now registered as an assistant professor. He has been leading the municipality of Kočevje as a non-professional (!) mayor since 2010, when he defeated the incumbent mayor and former MEP Janko Veber. The irony is that he and Veber were both former members of the Social Democrats party: Veber was the mayor, and Prebilič was a municipal councillor, and he was also active in the SD party at the national level. Today, however, neither of them is a member of the SD party anymore. Veber founded the Sloga (Unity) party and then ran (unsuccessfully) for the mayor’s chair again, but the SD party gave up on him when he became embroiled in an intelligence and security scandal as defence minister.
We have already written several times in the magazine Demokracija about Prebilič’s poor performance as mayor of Kočevje, although on the other hand, interestingly enough, he also took part as host of the celebrations of the Association for the Values of Slovenian Independence on the anniversary of the first Territorial Defence outpost (17th of December 1990). He has shown at the pre-election discussions that he is politically similarly “red” as the representatives of the Freedom Movement party, the Social Democrats, the Left party (Levica), etc. On top of that, he is also on the side of the fanatics who are pushing through the gloomy measures of the so-called Green Transition, although it has already been shown some time ago that this is a big deception.
Most votes for Vesna in Brussels
But for now, the directors of the Prebilič as the “new face” installation can certainly be satisfied. Not only did Vesna win third place, but Prebilič also came third among the recipients of preferential votes – he received over 52 thousand votes (out of a total of over 70 thousand votes for Vesna). An analysis of votes from abroad shows that Vesna received the most votes from Slovenians in Vienna, Belgrade, and also in Brussels. This fact was pointed out a few days ago by journalist and editor Peter Jančič.
Given the way the “First Lady” (actually the companion of the unknown status of the Prime Minister) Tina Gaber has recently been slandering the Slovenian Democratic Party (Slovenska demokratska stranka – SDS) with claims about staffing, it is worth asking how much “staffing” the SDS party was actually able to do at the Permanent Representation to the European Union during the previous SDS government term, if Vesna got the most votes there. Even the President of the SDS party himself, Janez Janez Janša, has pointed this out in a post on X, writing: “A signal for Robert Golob. It’s over. Subconsciously, those who see the incompetence and clientelism of the current government most closely have already turned to the “new face”. See also the result of Prebilič in the area of Ljubljana, where most of the civil servants reside. The graph of the election results at the Permanent Representation to the European Union in Brussels also says a lot about the “staffing capacity” of the SDS party, which had a foreign minister in the previous term and even led the European Union,” he noted.
As Janša suggested, these votes for Prebilič, also in the districts of Ljubljana where most of the officials live, are a sign that the end is near for Golob. Not least because the strike by employees in administrative units is getting worse and worse, and there are practically no “Janšaists” among the employees, as was admitted by an anonymous employee (a left-wing sympathiser) who was upset about the political replacement of the head of the Administration Unit Ljubljana, Andreja Erjavec.
The graph also illustrates that in Brussels, the SDS party, which was otherwise victorious, only finished in sixth place. It was even beaten by the Left party and the New Slovenia party (Nova Slovenija – NSi). Janša also took a swipe at Anže Logar between the lines.
It is not yet known how they will get rid of Golob
However, speculation has also been rife lately as to whether Golob has now also “thrown in the towel” and nonchalantly flown off on holiday to Dallas, where his tabloid behaviour is actually causing more and more outrage. Which would mean that he is not bothered about anything anymore and that he already knows that he will end up on the “discarded pile” soon, so he does not really care all that much about the public reaction anymore. The question is what his godfathers Zoran Janković and Milan Kučan have told him in the meantime. The latter has already commented on the election results and criticised Golob’s government.
It is not yet known how Golob will be replaced and whether Janković could even replace him “temporarily”. What is known is that Janković has never led a government, despite the spectacular victory of his party, Positive Slovenia (Pozitivna Slovenija), which was then followed by the famous “procession” to the City Hall (2011). Janković did not show any flexibility in the negotiations on the composition of the government, so Janša formed the government anyway, but this government was then overthrown so that Alenka Bratušek, who had managed to sell Mercator, could be put in office.
The question now is how long Prebilič will “last” in Brussels and whether he might be “dragged” back to Slovenia in less than two years’ time. In addition, let us not forget that the transitional left still has some other “irons in the fire” when it comes to the underhanded scandals that they use to try to unfairly lower the SDS party’s poll ratings. It is the European elections that have shown that the transitional left cannot win in an honest way.
Gašper Blažič
