Janez Janša
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| Janez Janša | |
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| Incumbent | |
| Assumed office 09 November 2004 |
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| Preceded by | Anton Rop |
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| Born | 17 September 1958 Ljubljana, Slovenia, Yugoslavia |
| Political party | SDS |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Janez Janša (born September 17, 1958 as Ivan Janša in Ljubljana) is a Slovenian politician and president of the Slovenian Democratic Party since 1993. He has been the Prime Minister of Slovenia since November 9, 2004.
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[edit] Youth and education
Born as Ivan Janša to a Roman Catholic working-class family of Grosuplje, he was called Janez (a version of the same name, known as John in English) since childhood. His father was a former member of the Slovenian Home Guard who had escaped Communist retaliation due to his young age.[1] He graduated from the University of Ljubljana with a degree in defence studies in 1982, and became a trainee in the Defence Secretariate of the Socialist Republic of Slovenia. In his younger years, he was a member of the League of Communists and one of the leaders of its youth wing. He became president of the Committee for Basic People's Defence and Social Self-Protection of the Alliance of Socialist Youth of Slovenia (ZSMS).
[edit] Dissident
In 1983, Janša wrote the first of his dissident articles about the nature of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA). In the late 1980s, as Slovenia was introducing democratic reforms and gradually lifting restrictions on the freedom of speech, Janša wrote several articles criticizing the Yugoslav People's Army in the independent magazine Mladina. As a result, his re-election as president of the Committee was blocked in 1984, and in 1985 his passport was withdrawn. He claims to have made over 250 job applications in the following year without success, and was unable to secure publication of any articles. In this period he earned his living writing computer programs and acting as a mountaineering guide. Liberalisation in the succeeding years allowed him to get work as secretary of the Journal for the Criticism of Science (1986) and later to begin publishing again in Mladina. On 30 May 1988 he was arrested together with other three Mladina journalists and a staff sergeant of the Yugoslav Army, Ivan Borštner. They were tried in a military court on charges of exposing military secrets, and given prison sentences. The trial was conducted in camera, with no legal representation for the accused, and in Serbo-Croat (the official language in yugoslav army) rather than in Slovene. Janša was sentenced to 18 months imprisonment, initially in the maximum security prison at Dob, but following a public outcry, he was transferred to the open prison of Ig. The case became famous as the JBTZ-trial and triggered mass protests against the regime, which marked the beginning of the process of democratization, known as the Slovenian Spring. Janša was released after serving about six months of sentence, and became editor in chief of the Slovene political weekly magazine Demokracija (Democracy). He remained in this position until the elections of May 1990.
[edit] Politician
In 1989, Janša was involved in the founding of one of the first opposition parties in Slovenia, the Slovenian Democratic Union (SDZ) and became its first vice-president, and later president of the Party Council. Following the first free elections in May 1990 he became the Minister of Defence in Lojze Peterle's cabinet, a position he held during the Slovenian war for independence in 1991. After the breakup of the SDZ in 1992, he joined the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia (now called Slovenian Democratic Party) and remained Defense Minister until March 1994, when he was dismissed by Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek following allegations that he allowed the military to interfere in civilian justice. He was subsequently cleared of these allegations in an independent inquiry. In May 1993, he was elected president of the Slovenian Social Democratic Party with the support of Jože Pučnik, the party's previous leader, and was re-elected in 1995, 1999 and 2001.
He became again Defense Minister from June 2000 to November 2000 in the short-lived centre-right government of Andrej Bajuk. During this time he introduced chaplains to the armed forces.
Following the victory of the Slovenian Democratic Party and its allies in the general election of 2004, Janša was appointed by President Drnovšek to form a new government on 3 November 2004. Six days later, he was elected Prime Minister of Slovenia by the National Assembly, polling the votes of 57 of the 90 MPs. His cabinet was approved by Parliament on 3 December the same year.
Janša has published several books, the two best-known of which are Premiki ("Manoeuvres", published in 1992 and subsequently translated into English under the title "The Making of the Slovenian State") and Okopi ("Barricades", 1994), in which he exposes his views on the problems of Slovenia's transition from Communism to a parliamentary democracy. In both books, but particularly in Okopi, Janša criticized the then President of Slovenia Milan Kučan of interferring in daily politics using the informal influence he had gained as the last chairman of the Communist Party of Slovenia.
After the lanslide victory of the opposition candidate Danilo Türk in the 2007 presidential election, Janša filed a motion for a vote of confidence in the government on November 15, 2007, claiming that the opposition's criticism was interfering with the government's work, contrary to the previous agreement between the parliamentary parties, in which the opposition agreed not to undermine the government's work during Slovenia's presidency over the European Union.[2] The government won the vote, held on November 19, with 51 votes supporting it and 33 opposing it.[3]
[edit] Trivia
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Janša has two children with Silva Predalič. In autumn 2006, it was revealed that he is dating a 28-year-old physician Urška Bačovnik from Velenje. He is frequently accompanied by Ms Bačovnik at public occasions, such as the Vienna Opera Ball. [1]
In 2007, three performing artists from Slovenia officially changed their names to Janez Janša. They did so for personal reasons. See: Janez Janša (director), Janez Janša (artist), Janez Janša (performance artist).
[edit] See also
[edit] References
- ^ Janez Janša, Okopi (Ljubljana: Mladinska knjiga, 1994)
- ^ "Slovenian PM seeks confidence vote after opposition candidate became president", Associated Press (International Herald Tribune), November 16, 2007.
- ^ "A Slovenian government crisis averted", Courrier International, November 21, 2007.
[edit] External links
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by José Sócrates Portugal |
President-in-Office of the European Council 2008 – present |
Incumbent |
| Preceded by Anton Rop |
Prime Minister of Slovenia 2004 – present |
Incumbent |
| Preceded by Office created |
Minister of Defence 1990 – 1994 |
Succeeded by Jelko Kacin |
| Preceded by Franci Demšar |
Minister of Defence 2000 |
Succeeded by Anton Grizold |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by Jože Pučnik |
President of the Slovenian Democratic Party 1993 – present |
Incumbent |
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