Janez Janša
Janez Janša was prime minister of Slovenia three times, in 2004-08, 2012-13 and 2020-22, the journalist whose arrest by the Yugoslav army in May 1988 for publishing a military document, and whose trial with three others before a military court in Ljubljana in Serbo-Croat, brought the crowds that made the Slovenian spring and the independence of 1991, in which he was the defence minister who organised the territorial defence that fought the Yugoslav army for ten days and won. He was the hero of the ten-day war and then, from the 1990s, the leader of the right. He has been the Slovenian Democratic Party's president from 1993 to the present, thirty-two years. He is the friend of Orbán and the admirer of Trump, whose congratulations to Trump on election night in 2020 before the count was done were the country's embarrassment. His third government was formed in March 2020 in the pandemic's first weeks when a coalition collapsed. It was the fight with the press agency he starved of funds, the journalists he attacked on Twitter, the police he replaced, the cyclists' protests every Friday for two years, and the European Parliament's resolutions. It was all ended by the election of April 2022 that Golob's new party won by twelve points. He was born in Ljubljana in 1958, studied defence at the university, was the Communist youth's defence secretary until the party expelled him in 1983 for his articles. He served six months of the eighteen the court gave him in 1988 before the protests and the presidency of Slovenia freed him. The first government, of 2004-08, was the entry into the euro in 2007, the first of the new members, the presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2008, the first by a new member. There was the Patria affair, the Finnish armoured vehicles contract of 2006 for which he was convicted of bribery in 2013 and jailed in 2014 for six months until the constitutional court annulled the conviction in 2015, after which the case expired. The second government of 2012-13 fell to the anti-corruption commission's report on his assets and the street protests of that winter. He leads the opposition again, ahead in the polls for the election of 2026. He has said that the transition of 1991 was stolen by the old party's networks. That is the argument he has made for thirty years and the reason half the country will not vote for him and half will.
- Lived: 1958 CE – ?
- Nationality: Slovenian
- Roles: prime minister, politician
