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Slovenia May Face `Circus' in Forming Cabinet After Snap Vote

Slovenia May Face `Circus' in Forming Cabinet After Snap Vote

(Bloomberg) -- Slovenia may be heading into a post-election “circus” as the latest poll showed three parties in a tight race, signaling the winner may have a tough time to form a coalition after the snap vote.

The List of Marjan Sarec, an ex-comedian who shot to political popularity during last year’s presidential challenge to incumbent Borut Pahor, led the poll even as his support fell to 15 percent in April from 19.2 percent in March, the Delo Stik pollster said on Monday. Ex-Premier Janez Jansa’s Slovenian Democratic Party was second and the Social Democrats were third in the poll.

Slovenia May Face `Circus' in Forming Cabinet After Snap Vote

“While the poll result shows a statistical dead heat, the certainty is that it will be a circus putting together the government,” Zarko Puhovski, a political analyst and professor at the University of Zagreb, said by phone. “There are three strong groups that consider themselves outside ideology and they could form a coalition with anyone else, which means it will probably take weeks if not months to put the government together.”

Slovenia plunged into political uncertainty last month with the unexpected resignation of Prime Minister Miro Cerar after the Supreme Court annulled the referendum result on the government’s biggest infrastructure project and ordered a new one. Parties are still split on the timing of the snap vote. President Pahor will probably dissolve parliament and announce an election date on April 14, his spokeswoman Spela Vovk said by phone.

To contact the reporters on this story: Boris Cerni in Ljubljana at bcerni@bloomberg.net, Jasmina Kuzmanovic in Zagreb at jkuzmanovic@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andrea Dudik at adudik@bloomberg.net, Andrew Langley

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