Slovenia bets on Alenka to take over

For the first time the country trusts a woman, young too

Center-left program based on ending austerity and comabatting corruption

She must take the position of the Prime Minister who is in the midst of a corruption scandal, raise the economy out of collapse, and be successful in the undertaking of calming a social climate ripe with demonstrations and protests in the town squares. Not only. The potential new Prime Minister of Slovenia will also have an important little responsibility: that of being the first female Prime Minister in the history of the country. The arduous task is for Alenka Bratušek: never has another woman arrived to the seat as a government leader in the brief history of independent Slovenia.

42, young, long brown hair – Alenka is a financial expert and head of the main centre-left opposition party Positive Slovenia but she is also a wife and mother of two children. She has a degree in Natural Sciences and Technology and a Masters in Management. The PM candidate has held various positions in public administration but she only entered her actual political life 2 years ago. She began alongside the Governor of Ljubljana, Zoran Janković, in the Positive Slovenia Party, founded for the December 2011 elections. After accusations in January of financial embezzlement, Janković pulled himself out, leaving the reins of the party just to her.

Previously from 2006 she was City Councilwoman for Kranj, her hometown situated near Ljubljana with a population of 55,000. Elected among the Liberal Democrats, Bratušek was part of several pro-market parties before joining Positive Slovenia. “It was not an easy decision to go into politics; it is not a highly esteemed profession,” she herself says on the Positive Slovenia website. The reference is to the obscure image of the corruption scandals that buried several politicians of the country. “I hope and believe – she concludes though – that we can improve this image.”

During the reign of the MEP’s in 2008, when we had not attained a mandate, Alenka Bratušek described herself as “a woman who knows what she wants, decisive, direct and who is not capable of lying and make false promises.” To the Slovenian citizens, today she assure above all she will say no to austerity, no to cuts and no to corruption. On the basis of these three issues the Parliament of Ljubljana gave her the go ahead to form a new government after the vote of no confidence for Janez Janša.

For her now the first challenge is to be able to come to an agreement with the parties to start a new government within 15 days. Zoran Janković was unable to achieve this objective at the beginning of 2012, thus leaving the task of forming a government to his opponent.

The road is uphill but at least achieving political stability, in such a complicated economic time, would be a fundamental achievement, as Sir Graham Watson, President of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe, reminds us. “Slovenia cannot afford to be worried about a political crisis; it cannot allow itself to lose the citizens’ confidence.” And to the new government Watson hopes for stability in order to “enact the political and economic reforms necessary to manage the difficult economic challenges.”

Letizia Pascale