Slovenians vote in tight race between liberals and populist right

By Fatos Bytyci and Daria Sito-Sucic

LJUBLJANA, March 22 (Reuters) - Polls opened on Sunday in Slovenia's election pitting incumbent liberal Prime Minister Robert Golob against right-wing populist Janez Jansa, with neither looking set to win a parliamentary majority in the vote that could be decided by smaller coalition partners.

Nearly 1.7 million Slovenians will be able to cast votes at polling stations that opened at 7 a.m. (0600 GMT) across the Alpine country and will close at 7 p.m.. The election commission is expected to announce the preliminary results after 8.30 p.m..

The latest opinion polls indicated pro-Donald Trump Jansa's Slovenian Democratic Party (SDS) and Golob's Freedom Movement (GS) were set for a close race after an eleventh-hour campaign drama involving allegations of foreign meddling and graft.

Jansa said the vote is one of the most important in Slovenia's 35 years of independence, and will decide the future direction of the country.

"I hope that Slovenia will get rid of the organised criminal organisation," he told reporters after casting his vote in the village of Arnace, 85 km northwest of the capital Ljubljana.

Analysts say Jansa, who is seeking a fourth term as premier of the European Union and NATO member state of 2 million people, has a devoted voter base and the lower the turnout, the higher the chances of him winning the election.

At stake is Slovenia's domestic and foreign agenda, where the outgoing government had focused on social and health reforms but delivered mixed results.

Jansa has promised to introduce tax breaks for businesses and cut funding for civil society, welfare and media.

Pro-Israeli Jansa, who is an ally of Hungary's veteran nationalist leader Viktor Orban, would also likely change Golob's foreign policy under which Slovenia was one of the few European countries that recognised an independent Palestinian state and last year imposed an arms embargo on Israel.

DIRTY CAMPAIGN, GRAFT ALLEGATIONS, FOREIGN MEDDLING FEARS

The election campaign, which observers described as dirty from the start, heated up this month when covert videos were published on an anonymous website purportedly exposing government corruption.

A report this week alleged that Jansa met with officials from Israeli private spy firm Black Cube, which LinkedIn alleged in 2023 was behind a hidden camera campaign that targeted activists and journalists in the lead-up to Hungary's 2022 vote.

Ifigenija Simonovic, a 73-year-old writer, said that she did not like the language and rudeness seen in the election campaign.

"No politeness, some lies that came out on one side or the other so I didn't feel they were telling us, the voters, the story that we could follow," Simonovic said after casting her vote in Ljubljana.

"So to decide today it really wasn't easy."