SLOVENIA WILL hold a general election on March 22nd, and polls show the front-runner is Janez Jansa (pictured), a right-wing populist and three-time former prime minister who is currently in opposition. Last week Mr Jansa’s chances seemed to improve: a website suddenly appeared, filled with accusations of corruption against several people linked to the government. Videos published on the site showed them bragging about their political connections to interlocutors who were apparently representing themselves as foreign businesspeople.
Yet those depicted in the footage said it had been edited or manipulated, and denied any wrongdoing. On March 16th Mladina, a local news outlet, reported that operatives from Black Cube, an Israeli political-intelligence firm, had met Mr Jansa at his party’s headquarters in December. The report suggests that Black Cube may be behind the website. The firm did not respond to a request for comment.
The videos and the question of who produced them have upended the campaign. Robert Golob, the liberal prime minister, has alleged that “foreign services” are meddling in the election. Mr Jansa denies involvement with Black Cube or the videos, but says they show the government are a bunch of crooks. The Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS), which he leads, wrote on X that “a monument should be erected” to the Israeli firm for helping to fight corruption.
Mr Jansa lost the previous election in 2022 by a landslide to Mr Golob, a charismatic former businessman. But several scandals have dented the government’s popularity. The Justice Ministry has been accused of cronyism in buying buildings, and Mr Golob has been investigated by the country’s anti-corruption agency for allegedly meddling in police affairs, a charge he has vowed to fight in court. A slowing economy has not helped: growth fell from 2.7% in 2022 to 1.1% last year. Polls show Mr Jansa’s SDS leading Mr Golob’s Freedom Movement by a few percentage points.
If Mr Jansa wins, Europe’s club of populist leaders will have another member. During his previous term he moved Slovenia in an increasingly autocratic direction. He lambasted journalists as “presstitutes” and bullied RTV, an independent news outlet, by cutting state funding. Freedom House, a watchdog, found that during his time in power Slovenia had the sharpest democratic decline among 29 formerly communist countries that it monitors.
A win for Mr Jansa would matter more if Viktor Orban, the prime minister of neighbouring Hungary, managed to hang on to power in an election next month. The Slovenian populist modelled his governing style on that of Mr Orban. Both men rail against global elites and insidious deep-state forces. Mr Jansa would give Mr Orban a second ally in the European Union alongside Slovakia’s Robert Fico, making it still harder for the EU to circumvent Hungary’s vetoes of aid to Ukraine or to punish it for violating the rule of law.
Black Cube previously worked for Harvey Weinstein, a disgraced Hollywood producer, to discredit women who had accused him of sexual abuse. In 2022 three Israelis working for the firm were given suspended sentences in Romania for trying to intimidate members of the judiciary.
The videos’ release echoes a similar campaign before Hungary’s election in 2018, when embarrassing recordings of NGO workers were made public. Black Cube was accused of being behind that stunt too; it has not denied it. LinkedIn, a networking site, says the company used fake profiles to entrap a network of activists before Hungary’s election in 2022. Now Slovenia’s election may hinge on whether voters are more concerned by what was said in the videos, or by who made them. ■
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