Overview of the week's top stories
since 14 September 2002

On Wednesday, both Barbara Brezigar and France Arhar announced that they are ready to officially register their candidacies for the post of president. The two are the first to gather the 5,000 signatures necessary to formally register with the National Electoral Commission. The election will be held on Sunday, 10 November.

Brezigar says she has actually managed to collect nearly 10,000 signatures, while Arhar has only revealed that he has collected more than the required 5,000. Both Jure Cekuta and Anton Bebler are expected to hit the 5,000 mark soon.

Meanwhile, several new candidates have stepped forward and begun collecting signatures. Piran town councilor Joško Joras announced his intention to campaign last Friday. Joras was detained recently in a Croatian jail during tensions over the sea border in the Bay of Piran. Although Joras is the head of the National Union of the Slovene People’ s Party (SLS), the party is already supporting France Arhar and has declined to offer Joras any official backing.

Also, France Bučar, speaker of the Slovene republic's parliament after the first multiparty elections in 1990, threw his hat into the ring on Monday. Bučar said he will only run if he can collect the 5000 signatures and will refuse the formal backing of any party.

The following day, co-president of the non-parliamentary Nova Party Gorazd Drevenšek became the sixteenth person to announce his intention to campaign for the presidency. Drevenšek is a leading opponent of Slovene membership in NATO.

On Sunday, seven officials will arrive in Ljubljana: Ankara assistant mayor Tuncay Alemdaroglu; Belgrade mayor Radmila Hrustanović; Bucharest mayor Traian Basescu; Vienna mayor Michael Haupl; Podgorica mayor Miomir Mugoša; Sarajevo mayor Muhidin Hamamdžić; and Bratislava mayor Josef Moravčik.

Additionally, Athens, Nicosia, Skopje, Sofija, Tirana, Rome, Warsaw and several associations will be represented by high-level city officials.

According to poll data released this week by the Ljubljana University Faculty for Social Studies (FDV), if a referendum were held next Sunday the public would vote in favor of Slovene membership in both the European Union and Nato. The data is part of the public opinion poll which the FDV has conducted annually for the past 35 years.

The current poll was conducted from the end of May to the end of June 2002 and primarily concerned Slovene attitudes towards membership in the EU and Nato. Comparisons with past results show those attitudes have not changed significantly in the past five years.

Asked how they would vote in a referendum for Slovene membership in the EU, 56.3 percent of respondents said they would be in favor, 22.5 would be against, and 21.3 are still undecided. FDV researchers, however, believe that other data shows that those who are undecided are generally not in favor of EU membership, that they are so-called Eurosceptics.

As compared to results from 1997, support for EU membership has fallen 8.4 percent, but remains sufficient for the referendum to succeed.

Voters are less supportive of the possibility of Slovene membership in Nato. Asked how they would vote in a referendum, only 42.2 percent said they would vote in favor of membership, 31.5 would vote against it and nearly 25 remain undecided.

As compared to results from 1999, the number supporting Nato membership has fallen by roughly 25 percent while the number opposed has risen by nearly half.

Petek case inches forward in Maribor

Mirko Zamernik, head of the parliamentary commission investigating the February 2001 attack on journalist Miro Petek and the subsequent police investigation, spoke to the radio news program 24 Ur this week about recent developments in the case. According to Zamernik, the summer proved to be productive and the commission has identified several key witnesses.

Enough information has been collected at this point that the commission will prepare a report on its progress by December at the latest.

The report will also detail several proposed changes to legislation. "We are talking about the protection of defendants – that law is already in parliamentary procedure, but the commission will probably offer suggestions concerning it," Zamernik told 24 Ur.

Early this week, the media reported that during Prime Minister Drnovšek’ s recent visit to Russia, Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Aleksij II said that he might be prepared to meet with Catholic Pope John Paul II in a neutral country, and suggested that Slovenia could fit the bill. On Wednesday, however, the plan was formally abandoned by the Patriarchate.

Relations between the Russian Orthodox and Catholic Churches soured this February when Pope John Paul II reorganized the structure of the Catholic Church within Russia, a move the Patriarch saw as a threat.

The Pope has made no secret of his desire to visit Russia and to meet with the Patriarch for many years. Although both Mikhail Gorbachov and Boris Yeltsin invited the Pope to Moscow, current Russian President Vladimir Putin did not extend the invitation, which could be a sign of increased influence by the Patriarch, who opposes a visit by the Pope.

Those who call the M-vstopnica number, 041-184-184, choose the film they want to see, the time and theatre, how many tickets and whether they want to purchase or reserve tickets from an automated menu. Mobitel GSM customers can either buy or reserve tickets, while other mobile customers can only reserve tickets for now.

According to the press release, this is one of the first tickets-by-phone programs in Europe and even around the world. Aside from Kolosej, Hermes SoftLab, Mobitel, Programski Atelje A&Z and the Finnish firm Moom Solutions developed the program, with additional support by Hewlett-Packard.

• The European Commission announced this week that its annual report on the preparations of the candidate countries for membership in the European Union will be available on 9 October, a week earlier than expected and several weeks earlier than normal. EC officials wanted to release the report early to allow the candidate countries as much time as possible to review them before the final accession procedures begin.