Slovenians choose president with no clear winner in sight
Slovenia’s presidential election is a choice between parties, says its voters, but that’s not stopping them from expressing how they would like to see the next leader in power.
By Elsaba Skoko
18 August 2013
It is a Monday morning in the Slovenian city of Krško, and already the streets are packed with voters for the first of two national voting rounds. Across town, the same scene is played out in the city centre, with a number of candidates walking up and down the pavements, or standing in the open squares, where tens of thousands of people will be voting on Thursday.
It is a scene which will be repeated throughout Slovenia on Thursday.
A total of 12,000 candidates are involved in the election campaign. This number will increase to 18,000 if the result is contested. According to a report recently published by the Slovenian Statistical Service (Slovenska župna prava, SP) – which monitors the campaign in detail – a total of 22 parties and independent candidates are currently active, although only in six out of nine of the country’s 22 municipalities are active parties able to compete in this election.
This has had a major effect on the composition of the electorate.
In the 2009 election, for example, in the city of Celje, which has the largest number of candidates, all the candidates for the centre-right Slovenian Democratic Party of Pensioners (Slovenska demokratska partija s obci, SDSO) – the party’s main rival in the country – were active.
This year, on the other hand, three parties – the SDSO, the Slovenian Socialists (Slovenska stranka, SLS) and the Slovenian Liberal Democrats (Slovenska liberalna demokracija, SLD) – have entered the campaign.
In the city of Celje alone there are more than 2,500 candidates vying for a place on the ballot. According to the SP, the number of registered voters is in the range of 10-15% of the population of Celje, which is about 12 square km in area
