Alenka Bratušek has her work cut out

He's gone. In December, when the Constitutional Court removed the obstacles to creating a "bad bank" and a "Slovenian Sovereign Holding" [responsible for managing the sale of state-owned enterprises], Janez Janša seemed to hold all the cards in the final phase of Slovenia's transition to a neoliberal economy.

Barely two months later, he has been ousted. Just like that, he's history. A prime minister of Slovenia and politician who came in for the most blistering criticism in the street protests and became a symbol of the elite that has ruled Slovenia since independence in 1991.

The new parliamentary majority, though, has no reason to crack open the champagne. The problems facing the Slovenian state are much bigger than merely Janša. Slovenia is peering into yet another year of alarming statistics without any certainly that the crisis has bottomed out.

Forecasts suggest growth will be negative (-2 per cent), the budget deficit will widen to reach 5 per cent of GDP at the end of the year, and unemployment will beat the record of 125,000. Businesses are stifled by debt, big exporters are recording a slump in orders, and the banking system has joined the walking dead.

It is no exaggeration to say that, five years into the crisis, Slovenia is almost "clinically dead”. Economic stagnation, accompanied by political excesses and moral deficits by the political and economic elites, have provoked widespread disenchantment and hopelessness.

Symbols of creeping poverty

In a state where once upon a time one could get a loan signed in five minutes, gold-buying agencies are sprouting up like mushrooms after a rain shower, and have become the symbol of creeping poverty. Major regional employers are closing their doors one after the other, while hospitals have run out of money for medicine. The young are leaving the country, the elderly are having more problems making ends meet at the end of the month, and the middle class is falling apart.

This is the situation facing the new prime minister, Alenka Bratušek, who risks running into rough waters from the very start of her mandate. She is, for now, acting president of a party, Positive Slovenia [centre-left], that was built on the personality cult of its founder, the mayor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković. The “Talibans" of Janša, ideologically homogeneous, will unquestioningly follow his economic dogma of austerity, swallowing it in one gulp like a medicine, eager that this anaesthetic sooth their pain. Will the ideologically heterogeneous coalition under Bratušek obey its leader?

With little political experience to fall back on, the new prime minister will need the talents of a magician, if not a miracle-worker. How to reach agreement on the sell-off of state enterprises, regarded as high treason by the Social Democrats (SD), while Positive Slovenia intends to award employees a quarter of the shares issued and the Civic List (LS centre-right) wants to sell them off right away? Will the coalition partners be able to reach a compromise on the "bad bank"? Will the government hold together to the end of its term, fixed at a year [the probable date of the next election]?

Spirit of rebellion is freed

Unlike Janša, Bratušek risks colliding with the people's awakened hopes, which will not make her job any easier. The spirit of rebellion is already out of the bottle. The unions, public sector employees and students have been gathering in the streets and squares for months. However, if it wishes to get the public finances in order, the new government will have to impose its unpopular measures on its base support. which poured out into the streets against the austerity measures brought in by Janša.

When it comes to getting the banks back into shape, the government will have to make some tough decisions. Taking into account the public's zero tolerance for the wayward habits of the political elite, the government must work on reforms and negotiate with the unions, in short, try to sort out the errors made by Janša and to find the missing money.

The scope of action of the new government will get clarified once that government is put together. If there is one piece of advice that might be offered to the new prime minister, it would be: don't build your strategy on (only) the return of the Ministry of Culture [disbanded by Janša] and cheap populism, which digs in behind the illusion that Slovenia can be shielded from change. More than ever before, the state needs action, not empty words. The survival of the new government depends on it.

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New PM offers second chance for PS

The appointment of the new leader of the centre-left Positive Slovenia (PS), Alenka Bratušek, provides the PS with a "second chance" to help the country, headlines Mladina. The weekly recalls that the previous party leader, Zoran Janković, failed to put together a government despite winning the December 2011 elections.

Bratušek became head of the party in January 2013 as the coalition partners of the PS - Civic List, DeSUS and the Social Democrats - demanded that Janković step down, after allegations emerged during a parliamentary commission investigation into graft in Slovenia.

The 42-year-old first woman to head the government of the country will have her work cut out for her, Mladina adds: "Only Greece and Cyprus, two countries that have been forced to seek international financial assistance, were in a worse situation than Slovenia. [...] Last year, Slovenia made a lot of absurd mistakes. [...] There's no guarantee that the new team will be able to do any better.”