LJUBLJANA: Slovenia's centre-left minority government on Tuesday faces a confidence vote that is likely to produce a 'No' vote and pave the way for early elections in the tiny eurozone country.
"If we do not win the confidence vote, we'll go for early elections," Social Democrat Prime minister Borut Pahor said.
If Pahor's government falls, fresh elections will take place late this year or early next year, according to Slovenian law.
Pahor has asked parliament to approve his choices for five recently vacated cabinet posts and linked a confidence vote to the appointments.
The government's coalition, formed by Pahor's Social Democrats Party (SD) and the Liberal Democracy Party (LDS), has only 33 MPs in the 90-seat parliament since the pensioners' party DESUS and the centre-left Zares quit government last spring.
Daily Delo reported on Saturday that Pahor's government could survive "only if a miracle happened" since four parliamentary parties led by the centre-right opposition Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) have announced that their 45 MPs would vote against Pahor's cabinet.
If Pahor survives the confidence vote, his government would face the difficult task of keeping public finances stable until regular elections in the autumn of 2012, amid a dearth of public support for much-needed
pension and labour reforms.
Last week the government corrected its economic growth forecast for this year to 1.5 percent of Gross domestic product (GDP), from 2.2 percent predicted earlier.
The public debt of the former Yugoslav republic that joined the EU in 2004 and the Euro Zone in 2007 has jumped to 43.3 percent of GDP in 2010 from a 22.5 percent in 2008.
At the same time, the total number of unemployed in the country of two million residents has been above 10 percent of the workforce for the last 12 months, reaching 11.5 percent in July.
Copyright AFP (Agence France-Presse), 2011
Comments
Comments are closed.