| Janez Janša | |
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| In office 9 November 2004 – 21 November 2008 |
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| President | Janez Drnovšek Danilo Türk |
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| Preceded by | Anton Rop |
| Succeeded by | Borut Pahor |
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| Born | 17 September 1958 Ljubljana, Yugoslavia (now Slovenia) |
| Political party | Democratic Party (1991–present) |
| Other political affiliations |
League of Communists (Before 1989) Democratic Union (1989–1991) |
| Spouse(s) | Urška Bačovnik |
| Alma mater | University of Ljubljana |
| Religion | Roman Catholic |
Janez Janša (born 17 September 1958) is a Slovenian politician and president of the Slovenian Democratic Party. Between November 2004 and November 2008, he served as the Prime Minister of Slovenia.
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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 from Upper Carniola 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).
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 As a result, his re-election as president of the Committee was blocked in 1984, and in 1985 his passport was withdrawn.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 said that he made over 250 job applications in the following year without success, and was unable to secure publication of any articles.[citation needed] 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 three other 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 the Yugoslav army) rather than in Slovene.[citation needed] 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 known 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. The Committee for the Defence of the Rights of Janez Janša was formed soon after his arrest, which became the largest grassroots civil society organization in Slovenia with over 100,000 members.
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.
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 Defence Minister until March 1994. In May 1993, he was elected president of the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia with the support of Jože Pučnik,[citation needed] the party's previous leader, and was re-elected in 1995, 1999 and 2001.
In March 1994, Janša was dismissed by Prime Minister Janez Drnovšek as a consequence of the so-called Smolnikar affair (also known as Depala Vas affair). The affair began when three military intelligence servicemen allegedly brutally arrested a civilian, hired by the Ministry of the Interior for espionage. Janša was never accused of direct responsibility for the this action, but his public defence of the military agents who carried out the arrest provoked an outrage in the left wing sectors of the public opinion. Janša's stance triggered his dismissal and the removal of the Social Democratic Party from the ruling coalition. The official charges against the military servicemen involved were later dismissed, but the issue remains a point of controversy. Janša used the parliamentary debate on his dismissal for a radical criticism of the ruling coalition, including the Prime Minister Drnovšek and President Milan Kučan, whom he accused of abusing his informal connections for subversive political actions. Janša's dismissal caused a great stir in the public opinion, including mass demonstrations in his support. The Social Democratic Party became the main opposition force, and in the 1996 parliamentary elections it rose from around 3.5% to more than 16%, becoming the third largest political party in the country. Janša remained the leader of the opposition until 2004, with a short interim between June and November 2000, when he served as Defence Minister 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 members. His cabinet was approved by the Parliament on 3 December the same year.
After the landslide victory of the opposition candidate Danilo Türk in the 2007 presidential election, Janša filed a Motion of Confidence in the government on 15 November 2007, stating 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] In the speech delivered after the vote, Janša announced, among other, an intensification of the fight against financial criminality and the illegal concentration of capital in the hands of single powerful managers, to whom he referred as tycoons. In the following months, the Slovenian police and public prosecution launched a full scale investigation against some of the biggest companies in the country, namely against the Laško Brewery Concern.
On September 1 2008, some three weeks before the Slovenian parliamentary elections, allegations were made in Finnish TV in a documentary broadcast by the Finnish national broadcasting company YLE that Janša had received bribes from the Finnish defense company Patria (73.2 % of which is the property of the Finnish government) in the so-called Patria case.[4][5][6] Janša rejected all accusations as a media conspiracy concocted by left-wing Slovenian journalists, and asked YLE to provide evidence or to retract the story.[7] Janša's naming of individual journalists, including some of those behind the 2007 Petition Against Political Pressure on Slovenian Journalists, and the perceived use of diplomatic channels in an attempt to coerce the Finnish government into interfering with YLE editorial policy, drew criticism from media freedom organisations such as the International Press Institute.[8][9]
As yet, YLE has declined to broadcast a retraction or to reveal its sources[citation needed], because criminal investigation by the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation is still underway.
In the elections, the Slovenian Democratic Party lost to the left wing coalition. In November 2008, he was replaced as Prime Minister by the Social Democrat leader Borut Pahor.
Janša has published several books, the two 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 interfering in daily politics using the informal influence he had gained as the last chairman of the Communist Party of Slovenia.
Janša is an active mountaineer, golfer, footballer, skier and snowboarder.[10] Besides Slovene, he is fluent in Serbo-Croatian and English.[citation needed]
Since July 2009, Janša has been married to the physician Urška Bačovnik from Velenje. The two were dating since 2006.[11] Before his marriage with Urška Bačovnik, Janša was in a long-term relationship with Silva Predalič, who bore him two children, son Žan and daughter Nika, both whom are currently students.[10][12]
| Political offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| New title | Minister of Defence 1990–1994 |
Succeeded by Jelko Kacin |
| Preceded by Franci Demšar |
Minister of Defence 2000 |
Succeeded by Anton Grizold |
| Preceded by Anton Rop |
Prime Minister of Slovenia 2004–2008 |
Succeeded by Borut Pahor |
| Preceded by José Sócrates |
President of the European Council 2008 |
Succeeded by Nicolas Sarkozy |
| Party political offices | ||
| Preceded by Jože Pučnik |
President of the Democratic Party 1993–present |
Incumbent |
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