Judging by statements made by some of the political parties in the past few days, mandatary candidate Miro Cerar has enough support to be elected. The support has been announced by the Pensioners’ Party (DeSUS) as well as the party led by outgoing Prime Minister Alenka Bratušek (ZaAB), which guarantees 50 votes from members of the new parliament which is due to confirm the new mandatary next Friday.

Potential coalition partners are analysing the second draft of the coalition agreement, sent by Miro Cerar’s party (SMC), which had won the elections, on Tuesday evening. The most recent draft of the coalition contract, as reported by Radio Slovenija, includes changes to the tax system, aimed at taxing all categories of taxpayers more equally.
Partial social cap
The draft also includes a social cap in some form, by abolishing the upper grade of the income tax scale with the 50% tax rate and analysing the options to transform the tax scale to unburden the salaries of highly qualified workers. The state budget could be filled with a new version of property tax, yet it remains unknown when these plans would be implemented. Tax cash-registers for all businesses are planned, too.
Abolishing supplementary insurance
The draft proposes changing the structure of taxation rather than higher taxes. Health reform will be based on strengthening the public health system, financial sustainability of the system of basic insurance, separation of the public and the private, abolishing supplementary insurance and replacing it with tributes.
New pension reform
The new government also plans to prepare the frame for a new pension reform which would encourage later retirement and implement various forms of supplementary pension insurances. The government would also like to explore the options of enabling the pensioners to improve their financial situation through work. Holiday allowance for pensioners and adjusting the pensions will, as the contract notes, depend on financial capacities of the budget.
16 ministries
The last proposal of the coalition agreement mentions 16 ministries: foreign affairs, the interior, defence, finance (allegedly reserved for SMC), economy, law, public administration, health, ministry of labour, family, social affairs and equal opportunities; education and sports; higher education, science and technology; infrastructure; culture; agriculture; environment and spatial planning; Slovenians abroad.
SD satisfied with the draft
The leader of the Social Democrats (SD) Dejan Židan said the current draft was an improvement of the first one in many ways and that a significant share of SD’s comments had been taken into account. As Slovenian press agency (STA) reports, Židan has stressed the importance of SD’s comments regarding the economy and economics, which would enables faster economic growth, pointing out their proposal for establishing a so-called “fund for ideas”.

The area of social entrepreneurship is given special emphasis, too, as well as important improvements in agriculture and the environment. Židan argues that moderate approach is best in terms of pensions.
According to Židan, SD finds it important that the draft has refrained from mentioning the social cap and has instead included the option of using the savings from the planned tax reform for unburdening the salaries.
Han: some issues still open
The leader of SD’s parliamentary group, Matjaž Han, warned prior to consultations hosted by Pahor that some issues in terms of social themes are still open, and some questions related to economy and information society still need to be cleared up. Has said that the draft of the coalition contract was a foundation based on which SD could start “serious talks about more specific issues” with SMC. He hopes the two parties will come “close” by next Thursday. About the ministries in the future government, Han said SD was not interested in this yet, since it was not yet know how many parties would form the coalition.

For now, it appears that DeSUS and SD will quite probably join the coalition. Despite its program similarities with SMC, ZaAB remains a puzzle, and the executive board of New Slovenia (NSi) will analyse late this afternoon if their proposals have been taken into account and, based on this, decide whether to continue talks about joining the government or not.