The six-week-old party of Slovenian political newcomer Miro Cerar won a snap election on pledges to reconsider the state-asset sales that helped sink the previous government. Cerar’s party got 35 percent of the vote, beating jailed ex-Premier Janez Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party, which got 21 percent, the State Election Commission said yesterday with 99.9 percent of ballots counted. Karl Erjavec’s pensioners party, Desus, was third with 10 percent, while the United Left was fourth with 6 percent, according to the commission, based in Ljubljana, the capital. Turnout was 51 percent, it said. Cerar is set to form the fourth coalition government since 2008 in the former Yugoslav republic of 2 million, which pushed through a 3.2 billion-euro ($4.4 billion) banking rescue last year to avoid a bailout similar to fellow euro members Greece and Cyprus. His pledge to review outgoing Premier Alenka Bratusek’s privatization plan risks friction with the European Union, which backed the proposals to help bolster state coffers.
“The potential new coalition won’t be business friendly and Cerar’s victory may see a negative market reaction,” Igor Masten, an economics professor at the University of Ljubljana, said by phone. “But once he forms a government, Cerar may well tone done his anti-privatization rhetoric. After all, Slovenia is a member of the EU and as such it needs to respect its commitments of the bloc.”
He’ll probably form a coalition with Desus and the Social Democrats, New York-based Eurasia Group said last week in an e-mailed note. The Social Democrats got 6 percent of the vote and the three parties are set to garner 52 seats in Slovenia’s 90-member parliament, the results show.
Full Article: Six-Week-Old Slovenian Party Triumphs in Early Election – Bloomberg.