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Southeast Europe
August 3, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 14
According to Mesec, Levica secured several important concessions, in particular regarding the protection of public healthcare, but the six parties failed to find common ground on major issues including privatisation of NLB bank, defence spending, foreign policy and the protection of human rights, STA added.
"We're satisfied with healthcare and pensions ... but on the whole we have reservations that the coalition agreement is not fiscally sound... The biggest problem for us is privatisation," Mesec said, STA reported.
However, this is still not the end of the Slovenian political saga yet because Levica’s internal referendum on whether to join the minority government lasts a full seven days according
to the party's bylaws. The path forward will therefore not be clear until August 8.
Besides Levica, Sarec can count on the support of the Social Democrats (SD) led by outgoing
Minister of Agriculture Dejan Zidan, outgoing Prime Minister Miro Cerar’s Party of Modern Centre (SMC), the Party of Alenka Bratusek (SAB) and Democratic Party of Pensioners of Slovenia (DeSUS).
However, analysts see DeSUS and the SAB as open to switching allegiance given that their presidents have not been elected to parliament and that a snap election could be too dangerous for them. This means there is still an opportunity for Jansa to cobble together a coalition despite assertions by the majority of the parties that they will not join forces with him because of his radical policies, in particular on migration, the Slovenian state-owned agency reported.
The current round of nominations for prime minister-designate expires on August 10. A third round in which an ordinary majority suffices is possible, but if that is unsuccessful parliament will be dissolved and a snap election called.
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