“Someone manufactured you,” is one of the most important lines said in the third season of Twin Peaks, the legendary and controversial series created by the recently-deceased director David Lynch.
This phrase – said by the now-deceased one-armed actor Al Strobel to one of Agent Cooper’s doubles, portrayed by Kyle MacLachlan – could also refer to what is going on in Slovenian politics. Especially recently, when speculation about the so-called “new faces factory” in Murgle has been circulating again, due to the announcement by MEP Vladimir Prebilič that he might also get involved in Slovenian domestic politics and take on the “messianic” role as the creator of a new party and a new future Prime Minister, following a model that has been used in the past.
But let us look at things more closely. Vladimir Prebilič is no stranger to Slovenian politics. Far from it. Now a professor at the Department of Defence Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences (FDV), he joined Pahor’s Social Democrats (Socialni Demokrati – SD) team in 2008 as head of the Defence Committee in the SD party’s Expert Council. The leadership of the Ministry of Defence during Pahor‘s government was then taken over by Prebilič’s more experienced colleague from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Ljubica Jelušič, Prebilič’s PhD co-mentor in 2004. The fact that he failed to become Defence Minister has obviously distanced him from the SD party.
Prebilič’s “exodus” from the SD party
In 2010, he successfully defeated the then-incumbent mayor, Janko Veber, in the second round of local elections as an independent candidate. The irony of all this is twofold: Veber, unlike Prebilič, became Defence Minister, and he, too, left the SD party. Prebilič had previously been an SD municipal councillor in Kočevje for many years. He was elected mayor three more times, and apparently, he was also able to get close to the organisers of the celebration, the Association for the Values of Slovenian Independence (VSO), on the occasion of the annual anniversary of the first Territorial Defence line up in Kočevska Reka. In one of the Association’s press releases, he was described as a patriot. It is not entirely clear, however, whether he decided to make this move on his own initiative or whether he was persuaded to do so by his compatriot Anton Krkovič, the main actor in the building of military defence in the times of the breakthrough, who until recently was one of the most prominent figures in the Association for the Values of Slovenian Independence.
Following Igor Šoltes’ recipe
It soon turned out that Prebilič had even broader ambitions and was not content only with the post of mayor. As one of the main players in the Independent Mayors’ Club, he was already considered a potential new party leader a few years ago. He even ran for President of the Republic in 2022 (apparently to draw attention to himself) and then successfully ran for MEP on the list of the Vesna – green party. This was apparently just a “dry run” for later projects, although it must be admitted that it is illogical that Prebilič would exchange the well-paid post of MEP for the arduous post of Prime Minister, unless he is forced to do so by his “godfathers”, who have for some time been ensuring that Prebilič is well promoted in the opinion polls, where he is also very highly rated. And he obviously has a better chance than Kardelj’s grandson Igor Šoltes, who was also an MEP with the Verjamem party, but then ended up among the SD quota officials, which was actually a great humiliation for him.
His profile is “just right”
Prebilič’s current political profile is therefore as follows: he is a defector from the party of the “proud successors of the League of Communists of Slovenia” (according to Marko Koprivc), which means that he remains politically rooted in the old regime base; he is outwardly an “independent”, i.e. a “neither left nor right” European functionary, who assumes the almost role of a political analyst; he is a morally and environmentally conscious “talker”, who corrects the unpleasant “sharp edges” of the current Prime Minister, Robert Golob; he is a former mayor who, with his patriotic content, was able to endear himself to the right-wing voters; and finally, he is a man who, like the former Prime Minister Miro Cerar, comes from an academic background, and from a professional-scientific profile as someone who knows international politics very well, especially in light of the current military conflicts (a very topical issue at the moment). This means that the mainstream media presents him first as an “expert” and then as a politician. Is this the recipe for replacing Golob with Prebilič? Perhaps. The only thing that remains unknown is the party that will give him the needed background. Will it be Vesna or something new again? Well, Golob’s Freedom Movement (Gibanje Svoboda) grew out of Jure Leben‘s Green Actions (Zelena dejanja).
There are actually no new faces
Slovenian political history shows that Slovenians have fallen for the same trick many times before. In fact, the only one who won but never became Prime Minister was the Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Janković, who won the top job after the famous procession of “famous Slovenians” to the City Hall – and with the generous help of the then-fresh “Trenta affair”. Instead of Janković, Alenka Bratušek was then chosen as the Prime Minister, followed by Miro Cerar. Then came Marjan Šarec, who, although he did not win the elections, came to power with the help of the anti-Janša coalition, and he stayed there right until his famous moment of giving up. Then came “Project Golob”. And, interestingly, none of the above was actually a blank slate, the most unblemished being Cerar, who had previously worked only in academia and could easily have become a constitutional court judge in his mature years. Janković and Šarec were mayors, Bratušek was an official in the Ministry of Finance (and then a Member of Parliament), and Golob, as we have already written, was an official in the Ministry of the Economy in 1999, then headed by Tea Petrin. He was a member of the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije – LDS), Positive Slovenia (Pozirivna Slovenija), and is now the head of the Freedom Movement. Well, Kučan has already said that Prebilič is not a new face. As if he wanted to justify his appearance in Slovenian politics in some way.
Will artificial intelligence come to the rescue?
So far, we have had a number of experiments with “new faces” in the style of “as long as it is not Janša”. And every single one so far has ended with the country in ruin, while the promoters of these experiments have been sent to the ash heap of history. But I would be unfair if I pointed the finger at my own nation as some kind of collective culprit for the situation. For no political experiment starts for “no particular reason”, but is carried out with the utmost deliberation, as it is a lively project with a whole army of opinion pollsters who are constantly “taking the temperature” among the people, while the godfathers meet in taverns and, on this basis, create new strategies to maintain power, as Zdenko Roter, Kučan’s elderly adviser and former interrogation “humanist with glasses”, revealed years ago in his book “The Fallen Masks” (Padle maske). After a corrupt mayor, a financially literate seamstress, an ethical lawyer, a village entertainer and an electricity hustler, the deep state now offers us an environmentally conscious defence scientist who, like all the above, will never be an independent factor in governance, but only a puppet of the godfathers, i.e. the unelected leaders and “uncrowned kings” of Slovenia. Do we really want another deception and another missed opportunity? Or will the next “new faces” be created for us by artificial intelligence?
Golobič is behind the scenes
Well, Prebilič is probably waiting for the outcome of the Trenta trial, as the first instance judgment is expected in May this year. And the “godfathers” are counting on the panel of the Celje District Court not to defy expectations and to knock out the trio of defendants (Janez Janša, Branko Kastelic, Klemen Gantar). It would be another fierce judicial scandal if this happens. However, unfortunately for our democracy, the transitional left has a majority of constitutional judges in its grasp. Is it ironic, however, that Prebilič left the SD party offendedly a long time ago, and the latter is supposed to have supported him for the post of prime minister? Odd. Well, one of the men in Prebilič’s background is also the ever-influential Gregor Golobič, one of the leaders of the factions within the transitional left, who is not liked by the current Golob team very much. Let’s not forget that the team led by Vesna Vuković comes from the ranks of the influential Borut Jamnik, Golobič’s rival…
New (and not so new) faces in Slovenian politics
2011 – elections – Zoran Janković
2013 – change of government – Alenka Bratušek
2014 – elections – Miro Cerar
2018 – elections – Marjan Šarec
2022 – Robert Golob
2025 – ?
Gašper Blažič
