Overview of the week's top stories
since 15 April 2002

At a parliamentary session on Tuesday, Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek announced that because of pressure emanating from the media, the government is abandoning its plan to purchase a multi-million dollar airplane.

The government is now reviewing its options. An agreement to buy the plane has already been concluded, though it may be possible for the government to back out of it. Alternatively, the government could go through with the purchase and immediately put plane up for sale.

In Mladina, Jani Sever wrote that "…it is clear that the affair has primarily damaged the image of the LDS, whose politics the public virtually equates with the politics of the government, and of course with the image of the prime minister and head of that party, Dr. Janez Drnovšek."

Mladina published the results of a public opinion poll conducted on 11 April among 601 respondents which showed 72 percent believe that it was not right for the government to buy the plane. Only about 17 percent thought that it was.

While about half of the respondents said that the plane affair has not changed their opinion about the prime minister, almost 30 percent said that it changed their opinion of him for the worse.

Because the prime minister stated that the government is abandoning the plane due to pressure from the media, respondents were also asked to evaluate the media’s reporting of the plan. More than half felt it was done properly, while 22 percent called it sensationalist and 14.3 percent said it appeared the media reporting was an organized campaign against the government or the prime minister.

Last Friday, the Finance Ministry reported the cost of the plane, and RTVS journalists calculated the taxes and interest to arrive at the plane’s full cost. Starting from the base cost of USD 35 million, they ultimately arrived at the shocking figure of USD 57 million. Once the figure was properly verified, the report was slated for that evening’s news.

The government unanimously decided on Friday to sell a 34 percent share of Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) to the Belgian bank KBC for about SIT 98 billion (USD 387 million). The money will be used to pay foreign debt.

The sale marks the end of the first phase of NLB’s privatization, and once KBC gets a license for the takeover from the Bank of Slovenia, the second phase will begin. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) is to be sold a five percent share, and twenty-nine percent more of the shares will be sold to domestic investors.

According to the finance ministry, the moves will result in the state owning one third of the bank, KBC another third, and private investors (including the EBRD) the remaining third.

While the progress in the privatization of NLB will be welcomed by outside observers who often criticize the pace of privatization in Slovenia, it is not necessarily an indicator that the state has changed its attitudes towards the privatization process. On Thursday, Minister of Information Society Pavle Gantar told the press that the privatization of Telekom Slovenije remains on hold.

Since there is no immediate need to privatize Telekom, the government is content to wait for better market conditions to get maximum profit from the sale.

Lojze Peterle was elected the representative of candidate countries to the presidency of the Convention on the Future of the European Union on Monday. Peterle, an MP of the opposition New Slovenia (NSi) party, is also the chairman of Slovenia’s parliamentary commission for European affairs and was foreign minister in the Bajuk government.

Peterle received 12 votes in the first round, beating Lithuanian candidate Alvydas Medalinskas, who received nine votes, and Slovak Irena Belohorská , who received just two. Given Peterle's connections to the influential European People's Party, his victory came as little surprise, according to Delo.

The candidates' representative in the presidency will officially be a guest, since the position was not part of the original plans for the Convention. Regardless, Peterle will have the same rights as the other twelve members of the presidency.

"My mandate is limited only by the Laeken Declaration, which decides that candidate states cannot prevent a unanimous decision reached by the member states," Peterle said at a press conference this week. He added that he sees his role primarily in offering initiatives and suggestions, as well as mediating disputes.

Statistics from last year's census in Austria released on Tuesday show that the number of Slovene speakers in the southern province of Carinthia (Koroška) has once again fallen. Just 12,586 people declared themselves Slovene speakers in Carinthia, 9.9 percent less than in 1991. Overall, 2.4 percent of the population of the region speaks Slovene, down from 3.3 percent in 1971.

Local Slovene leaders interpreted the drop as the result of the local atmosphere towards minorities. Bernard Sadovnik of the National Council of Carinthian Slovenes and Marjan Sturm of the Union of Slovene Organizations, along with Andrej Wakounig of the Slovene political party Unitary List called on the regional and federal governments to act to halt the process of assimilation by conducting more tolerant policies towards Slovene speakers.

According to Delo, head of the 2001 census Johann Ladstatter sees several reasons for the drop. The number of Slovene speakers over the age of 60 is much larger than the overall population (32.3 percent to 22.6 percent). On the other hand, the number of Slovene speakers under the age of 15 is three percent less than the national average. He attributes two thirds of the drop to the aging population. The other one third can be attributed to migration from rural to urban areas, where people are be less likely to register their Slovene language abilities.

The other members of the group, Bojan Požar in Saša Pukl, will return to Slovenia together with Čadež.

The trio Sestre, who will represent Slovenia next month at the Eurosong competition in Tallinn, are appearing in ads around the country advertising the wireless phone service provider Vega.

Vega is hoping to increase its number of subscribers. It currently has more than 11,000 users of which about 40 percent are subscribers.

• Successful negotiations with the European Commission have left Slovenia's steel industry satisfied that its trade with the EU will not be hindered. The EU recently raised tariffs in response to the decision of the United States to raise tariffs on steel in March. Slovene steel was exempted from the American tariffs, but it was unclear until this week whether it would also be exempted from those of the EU.

• Starting on Monday, sessions of parliament will be carried live on the internet. Television stations will no longer have to send their own teams to film proceedings, since the feed is being made available to television stations free of charge. Experts from RTVS and Pop TV participated in getting the project started.

• The Delo publishing house bought a 10-percent share of Gorenjski Glas last Friday from the Slovene Indemnity Society at an inflated price due to bidding by rival Dnevnik. Reportedly, Delo won out based on the fact that Gorenjski Glas is working with them in an attempt to go daily.

• Ljubljana’s hotel Slon celebrated its 450^th anniversary on Friday by parading two elephants through the city center. The word "slon" means "elephant," and the hotel is named after the elephant which accompanied Austrian arch-duke (later emperor) Maximillian to Ljubljana in 1552. The prince stayed in an inn which was on the current site of the Slon.