Slovenia officially joins Nato

Slovenia, together with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia formally joined the North-Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato) this week. Nato membership has been one of Slovenia’s key foreign policy goals since independence in 1991, although the citizenry is generally not as convinced of the need as are the politicians.

Prime Minister Anton Rop and Foreign Minister Dimitrij Rupel attended a 29 March ceremony in Washington D.C. hosted by United States President George W. Bush, along with dignitaries from the other new countries and Nato General Secretary Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. After a protocol event, the Americans held a reception for the representatives of the new Member States at the White House and another at the Corcoran Gallery in D.C.

That same day, Italian military aircraft entered Slovenia’s airspace to begin regular patrols. Since Slovenia has no air force of its own, the country requested the patrols from Nato’s air defense system NATINEADS. Though the planes belong to Italy, they are under the control of Nato Supreme Allied Commander for Europe James Jones.

Several days later, on 2 April, the Slovene flag was raised for the first time in front of Nato headquarters in Brussels, along with the flags of the alliance’s 25 other members. The Foreign Ministers of all of Nato’s Member States attended the protocol ceremony, and the North Atlantic Council met for the first time with 26 full-fledged members.

A poll published on 3 April in Delo saw that some 61 percent of respondents believe that Slovenia is actually more threatened by international terrorism now that it is in Nato than it was before, while just 33.8 said it is not. Just 47 percent believe that Italian jets guarding Slovene airspace is acceptable, while 32.7 believe that it is a violation of Slovenia’s sovereignty. Just under 14 percent agree that Slovenia does not necessarily have to defend its own airspace, but oppose this presence of jets from Italy.

The National Assembly ratified the North Atlantic Treaty on 24 February with a vote of 68:3, clearing the way for Slovene entry into Nato. The three votes cast against ratification came from the ranks of the far-right Nationalist Party, which opposes Nato membership. Nineteen members of parliament abstained from the vote.

Nevertheless, Slovenia’s membership in the defense alliance generally enjoys wide support from across the political spectrum. Ratification needed only a two-thirds majority in the Assembly, or sixty votes. Around 66 percent of the electorate supported Slovene membership in Nato in a March 2003 referendum.

Ministers survive confidence vote…

After 12 hours worth of interpellation hearings, the National Assembly decided on 30 March to keep Health Minister Dušan Keber in his post with a vote of 47:28. A vote of no-confidence by a simple majority of members of parliament, i.e., 46, would have seen Keber removed from office.

Later that same day, Internal Minister Rado Bohinc also survived a no-confidence vote, 46:30.

On 27 February, the opposition Slovene Democrat Party (SDS) and New Slovenia filed interpellation motions which sought to have both Keber and Bohinc removed from their posts. According to the constitution, a group of no less than ten members of parliament can initiate interpellation hearings against the government or an individual minister.

Keber was accused of eight violations which the opposition claims have destabilized the country’s healthcare system; among the charges against Bohinc was misconduct after issuing residency permits in February 2004 to Izbrisani victims on the basis of an April 2003 Constitutional Court ruling without waiting for legislation necessary to enact the ruling.

…but internal dispute shakes governing coalition

Both interpellation motions put a huge strain on the governing coalition. The Slovene People’s Party (SLS) decided to support the interpellation motion against Bohinc, a move which Liberal Democracy of Slovenia (LDS) and the United List of Social Democrats (ZLSD) saw as a violation of the coalition agreement. The coalition is made up of the LDS, the ZLSD, the SLS and the pensioner’s party DeSUS.

SLS leader Janez Podobnik has told the press several times that his party does not believe that it violated the coalition agreement. According to Podobnik, his party truly believed that Bohinc acted improperly and it would have been wrong for them to blindly support him in his work. The SLS took no formal stance on the Keber issue.

After a coalition meeting on 2 April to which the SLS was not invited, Prime Minister and LDS leader Anton Rop announced that the coalition agreement signed in 2000 and reconfirmed last year is no longer valid due to the actions of the SLS. However, he added that "the coalition will continue to function and has the necessary majority in the National Assembly." With the nine SLS seats in parliament, the coalition holds 59 seats, or one more than the two-thirds majority necessary to change election laws, defense laws or the constitution.

SLS leader Janez Podobnik told STA that his party will not leave the coalition and that Rop spoke too soon. "We are not leaving the coalition. We do not want to destroy it, because this would be irresponsible." Podobnik added that he had not yet received any formal notification that his party had been expelled from the coalition or that the coalition agreement is no longer in force.

Rop and Podobnik will meet next week to discuss the government’s future. Though Rop has said the SLS will not be involved in programmatic or personnel decisions, he left open the door to SLS participation in individual projects in which all parties have a mutual interest.

Opposition and Slovene Democrats (SDS) leader Janez Janša told the press that the entire affair is nothing more than pre-election posturing on the part of the LDS and SLS. "It isn’t a big deal, the SLS decision to support the interpellations in parliament had no consequences since half of their members did not even participate in the vote, and the prime minister’s decision that the SLS is no longer in the coalition will have no practical consequences if the party’s ministers stay in the government."

The coalition parties similarly maintained that the SDS-led interpellation motions were pre-election posturing as well.

Sunday: Izbrisani Referendum

On Sunday, voters will go to the poll to decide the fate of the so-called "technicalities bill" in referendum. The bill is the government’s first step towards regulating the situation of the so-called Izbrisani, citizens of other republics of the former Yugoslavia who were living in Slovenia at the time of independence but who did not have, or otherwise qualify for, citizenship in the newly independent country. The government revoked their permanent-resident status and erased them wholesale from the registries.

The technicalities bill compliments the systemic bill, but the Constitutional Court ruled in late February that the wording of the question in the proposed referendum on the latter was unconstitutional, and parliament is currently working to find an acceptable formula.

The "election silence", which Slovene law demands, was in effect throughout Saturday, which means that no campaigning was allowed for the 24 hours prior to the start of the referendum. The ban applies to political parties and non-governmental organizations. No significant violations were recorded.

SDS and NSi leaders, which are the referendum’s primary supporters, of course are calling for the technicalities bill to be shot down. The Slovene Nationalist Party (SNS) also encouraged voters to decide against the bill.

A low turnout is expected. Since independence in 1991, eight referenda have been held on legislative issues. The highest turnout rates were for the referenda on EU and Nato membership – each attracting more than 60 percent of the electorate. Turnout for the others was roughly between 30 and 40 percent. A survey published last week in Mag found that only about 40 percent of the public plans to vote in the current referendum, with more than 20 percent undecided about their participation.

According to that survey, about 40 percent of those intending to vote will vote against the technicalities act, while only about 17 percent will vote in favor of it. However, 41 percent remain undecided.

In April 2003, the Constitutional Court ruled that all of the Izbrisani must have their residency rights returned. The government was given six months in which to bring the law into alignment with the constitution, based on the Court’s decision. This was done in late 2003, but the changes were met with harsh opposition mainly by conservatives, which has led to the current situation.

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there were 18,305 citizens of other Yugoslav republics living in Slovenia in 1992 who had permanent resident status. Of the Ministry’s figure, 12,937 applied for citizenship under procedures introduced later, and 10,713 got citizenship. But according to unofficial estimates, 3000 to 4000 people are still without formal legal status in the country.

Centenary of America’s largest Slovene group

The largest fraternal organization for Slovenes in the United States, the Slovenska Narodna Podporna Jednota, or SNPJ, will celebrate its 100^th anniversary on 6 April with a banquet at the Hilton Hotel ballroom in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

SNPJ was founded in 1904 in Chicago with 270 individual members; today it has more than 42,000. The organization’s primary function was to offer reasonably priced life insurance and sick and disability benefits to Slovene immigrants. Such benefits were not offered at most immigrants’ workplaces at that time. It has also been active in nurturing the Slovene ethnic identity in the United States.

The organization was also active in the labor movement in the United States in the early 20^th century, and was also a vocal advocate of a sovereign Slovene nation after World War I, again after World War II and finally as the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia was collapsing in the early 1990s.

And in other news...

• The government’s office for Immigration and Refugees was abolished on 1 April. From its founding in 1992 until its abolition, it oversaw the asylum of nearly 70,000 refugees, mostly from the other republics of the former Yugoslavia.

• The 1 April issue of the regional weekly newspaper Dolenjski list once again made the case for the establishment of a university in Novo Mesto in the Dolenjska region. The region is home to about 140,000 – 200,000 if Posavje is included, and the proportion of young people is above the national average while the proportion of those with a higher education lags behind the rest of Slovenia. The university could expect about 6000 students, which the article states is "optimal for a modern small European university." The influx of educated cadres would have far-reaching effects on the region’s economy and cultural life. Plans to create a university here, which would be the country’s fourth, have been around for years but have made little progress.