Overview of the week's top stories
since 30 August 2002

Slovenia’s presidential and local elections will be held on 10 November, and prospective candidates began collecting the required 5,000 signatures on Monday in order to officially register by 16 October. The National Election Commission will review registrations until 23 October, at which time the final list of presidential candidates will be announced.

It is widely considered that Drnovšek will not have much trouble winning the election. Until recently most believed France Arhar was his most serious competition.

The August results of the Presidential Election 2002 poll released on Tuesday showed support for Arhar has dropped severely since July – by nearly 15 percent. In July, Arhar garnered 26.8 per cent of the vote, but August results show him with just over 12 after a major scandal concerning his salary.

Similarly, a poll conducted by Delo-Stik published in Tuesday’s Delo not only showed a massive seventeen percent drop in support for Arhar but a 1.2 percent rise in support for Brezigar, actually landing her in second place behind Drnovšek and ahead of Arhar.

So far, all of the towns have amended their local regulations to accommodate the change except for six: Beltinci, Semič, Krško, Grosuplje, Šentjernej and Trebnje.

Leaders in Grosuplje are so opposed to the idea that mayor Janez Lesjak, in the name of the city council, petitioned the Constitutional Court for a ruling on the constitutionality of the amendments on Tuesday. Grosuplje leaders are convinced that political representation for Roma must be carried out on the national level (i.e., in parliament) as is done for the Italian and Hungarian communities, rather than on the local level.

On 27 August 2001, Rogelj was convicted of criminal fraud, and the State Prosecutor further demanded an investigation into charges of criminal forgery. At that time, the judge decided that an investigation was unnecessary to secure a conviction.

Some 6,000 farmers rallied on Thursday in front of the parliament building in Ljubljana demanding that the government take their problems more seriously. The rally was organized by the Chamber of Agriculture and Forestry (KGZ) and the Cooperative Union of Slovenia (ZZS).

In a speech, KGZ secretary Peter Vrisk said that the farmers gathered from all parts of Slovenia in order to draw attention to the issues they face. Among the most prominent is the fact that every year the number of people engaged in agricultural activities drops by roughly 250. ZZS president Marija Horjak said that the state must do more to help young people who want to enter agricultural professions.

Results of an audit of the Slovene branch of the Red Cross released on Wednesday showed numerous irregularities between 1999 and 2001 which violate international conventions, the Law on the Red Cross of Slovenia, and other statutes and acts, according to STA.

The national Court of Audit has given the organization 80 days to respond to charges of mismanaging its finances in several ways, including by over-paying several of its leading figures. Further, the Red Cross must respond to the charge that resources collected for humanitarian purposes were improperly used to establish the Slork Foundation, which then loaned those resources out to other organizations.

• A free 48-page bi-weekly newspaper called Dobro jutro will appear on 26 September in Maribor, Slovenske Bistrice and Ptuj, according to Finance. Advertising will make up roughly half of the new paper’s contents. The remaining space will be dedicated to general-interest journalism, with particular attention paid to local events. The paper is being published by the Regional Media Association and will have a run of 60,000 copies.

• From Wednesday to Saturday, the southwestern town of Vilenica hosted its 17^th annual international writers festival under the banner "Vilenica 2002." The event was organized by the Slovene Writers' Association and nearly 120 authors from 31 countries participated. The highlight of the four-day event was the awarding of the Vilenica Grand Prix to Romanian writer Ana Blandiana.

• On 9 September at 8:00 p.m., the International Graphics Center (MGL) in Ljubljana will open an exhibit called "The Last Supper," by internationally prominent British artist Damien Hirst. The work won last year’s International Graphics Biennial, and the artist donated it to the MGL. The exhibit will run until 20 September 2002.

• POP tv’s new original series, Pod eno streho (Under One Roof), will premier on 30 September at 8:00 p.m. The series follows the channel’s highly successful original series TV Dober Dan (TV Good Day), which premiered in October 1999 and ran 81 episodes.