14th Government of Slovenia facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Janša III Cabinet
14th Cabinet of Republic of Slovenia
Date formed	13 March 2020
People and organisations
Head of state	President Borut Pahor (SD)
Head of government	Prime Minister Janez Janša (SDS)
Deputy head of government	Deputy Prime Ministers Zdravko Počivalšek (SMC) Matej Tonin (NSi)
No. of ministers	PM + 16 ministers
Total no. of members	16
Member party	SDS Concretely NSi
Status in legislature	Centre-right minority government 38 / 90
Opposition cabinet	None
Opposition party	LMŠ SD Levica SAB DeSUS (since 2020, support) SNS (support)
Opposition leader	Not an official position Marjan Šarec (LMŠ) Dejan Židan (SD) Luka Mesec (Levica) Alenka Bratušek (SAB) Zmago Jelinčič Plemeniti (SNS) Ljubo Jasnič (DeSUS)
History
Election(s)	2018 election
Legislature term(s)	8th National Assembly
Predecessor	13th Government of Slovenia
Successor	15th Government of Slovenia

The 14th Government of Slovenia was formed following the resignation of Prime Minister of the 13th Government Marjan Šarec in January 2020. Janez Janša of Slovenian Democratic Party formed a coalition with Modern Centre Party, New Slovenia, and Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia. The government was confirmed on 13 March 2020, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

Government formation

On 27 January 2020 Prime Minister Marjan Šarec (LMŠ) resigned following the resignation of the Finance Minister Andrej Bertoncelj (LMŠ) and previously announced resignation of Minister of Health Aleš Šabeder (LMŠ) due to disagreements around new healthcare legislation.

On 25 February 2020 President Pahor concluded the second round of consultations with political parties. Parties that are forming the new government confirmed the coalition agreement which was signed on the same day.

On 26 February 2020 President of the Republic Borut Pahor proposed to the National Assembly Janez Janša as candidate for Prime Minister.

On 3 March 2020 Janez Janša was elected Prime Minister with 52 votes, which means 3 opposition MPs voted for him, most probably MPs of SNS. Jani Ivanuša (SNS) also publicly stated he would support Janša.

On 6 March 2020 Prime Minister-elect Janez Janša proposed to the National Assembly the list of candidates for ministers. Hearings took place from 10 until 13 March 2020. Ministers of the 13th Government worked closely with the incoming formation in the time of transition to inform incoming ministers on the situation related to the coronavirus outbreak. Such coordination has not happened before. Both formations had a joint meeting on 9 March 2020. On 12 March 2020 outgoing Minister of Health Aleš Šabeder declared epidemic. Prime Minister-elect was critical of some decision taken by the outgoing formation.

On 13 March 2020 the National Assembly confirmed the list of ministers and the government took office.

Cabinet

Cabinet level positions are those of Prime Minister, ministers and ministers without portfolio. Others are present at the cabinet meetings (e.g. Chief of Staff to the Prime Minister, Secretary-General of the Government, Head of the Government Legal Service, state secretaries in the Office of the Prime Minister etc.). State secretaries can substitute ministers when absent. If Prime Minister is absent, he is substituted by one of the ministers, usually one of those holding the unofficial title of Deputy Prime Minister. Cabinet usually takes decisions by consensus, but it can also decide with relative majority of votes.

Government coalition

Composition lato sensu

Working bodies

Other bodies

Confirmation process and former members

Biographies

Former members

Cabinet composition timeline

Timeline of Government

Coronavirus pandemic

The new government took office in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic. The period during and immediately after the transition of power was marked by a series of controversial actions and decisions by the incoming government. The government allocated the highest possible salaries allowed by law to its ministers and state secretaries before reducing government functionaries' wages by 30% for the duration of the epidemic.

A state crisis office was created to confront the epidemic. The official Twitter account of the crisis office that was meant to inform the public about the epidemic frequently retweeted articles from SDS's official party newspaper and published an offensive and slanderous statement about four prominent critics of the government (saying that they escaped from a mental hospital and were infected with "virus COVID-Marx/Lenin") that prompted a lawsuit against the institution by the subjects of the tweet. The official explanation for the inappropriate communications – unauthorised access to the account by an unknown individual – was later refuted by the police.

Conflict with institutions

Upon taking office, the government swiftly replaced the leadership of the police, army, and intelligence services, which was also practice of the majority of the previous governments. The dismissed general secretary of police had just recently been admonished by an SDS politician to "consider her future" after she refused to make available information during a parliamentary oversight meeting due to a lack of legal authority for her to do so. Among the information being solicited were reportedly details regarding a criminal investigation into foreign financing of SDS-affiliated media organisations. The new government politicised the National Institute of Public Health (NIJZ), swapping two acting heads of the organisation in rapid succession after they fell out of favour (the second after saying the government's measures lacked scientific basis). PM Janša disparaged the WHO and called for the resignation of the director general while labelling Slovene public health experts who expressed objections to government public health policies as "so-called experts" and said the government is relying on "common peasant wisdom".

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a communique to the Council of Europe in which it alleged that communist legacy media constitute a majority of the Slovene media space, while the Interior Minister said he "[...] informed EU interior ministers about the media's and political left's fight against the government that is successfully stemming the epidemic. [...]" and listing anti-government protests as an example of such a fight.

The head of the National Bureau of Investigations (NPU) that was conducting the criminal investigation regarding potential improprieties with the procurement process was also summarily dismissed shortly after the investigation was launched. NPU and UPPD were additionally also carrying out a criminal investigation into foreign financing of SDS-affiliated media.

The government also dismissed the head of the national Statistical Office, reportedly because he did not allow an informal government working group (that was tasked with crafting the economic response to the pandemic outfall) to access confidential and highly sensitive raw econometric data collected by the Office. The pre-term dismissal was unprecedented in the nation's history. The board of the Office requested a constitutional evaluation of the dismissal. The dismissal prompted the EU Commissioner for Economy to address a letter to the Slovene government demanding a justification of the dismissal to insure the impartiality and independence of EU national statistical offices. Janša initially justified the dismissal by citing an alleged lack of "responsiveness" to government requests, however, responding to news reports of the letter, Janša responded on Twitter with "[...] I didn’t receive your letter, but press did. @govSlovenia replaced a political appointee as Statistics Office head with an expert with 30 y of experience in this Office. Hope this is the last time you play a political game for Slovenian left. @vonderleyen".

Anti-government protests

Public dissatisfaction with the government led to a series of protests starting soon after the new government took office. The protests were additionally fueled by the revelations regarding improprieties in the epidemic procurement process. Amnesty International Slovenia found that state actions were endangering the right to protest in Slovenia.

According to polls conducted in May, 52.2% of those polled thought the protests were justified (44.1% did not), and 57% of those interviewed (in another poll) agreed with the demands of the protesters (while 27% did not).