Janez Drnovšek (; 17 May 1950 – 23 February 2008) was a Slovenian liberal politician, President of the Presidency of Yugoslavia (1989–1990), Prime Minister of Slovenia (1992–2002, with a short break in 2000) and President of Slovenia (2002–2007).
Youth and early career
Drnovšek was born in Celje and was raised in the small town of Kisovec in the Municipality of Zagorje ob Savi, where his father Viktor (1925–2005) was the local mine chief and his mother Silva (1921–1976) was a homemaker. Drnovšek graduated from the University of Ljubljana with a degree in economics in 1973.
Meanwhile, he worked as an intern at a Le Havre bank. In 1975, at the age of 25, he became chief financial officer at SGP Beton Zagorje, a construction company. Two years later he became, for one year, an economic adviser at the Yugoslav embassy in Cairo.
He defended his master's thesis in 1981, and in 1986 he defended his dissertation at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Maribor. In 1982, he became head of the local branch of Ljubljana Bank in his home region of the Central Sava Valley in central Slovenia. In 1986 he was chosen to be a delegate at the Slovenian Republic Assembly (parliament) and also the Chamber of Republics and Provinces of the Yugoslav parliament.
Membership in the Yugoslav presidency
In 1989, Stane Dolanc, the Slovenian representative to the collective presidency of Yugoslavia, retired. The Slovenian Communist Party, aware of upcoming democratisation, decided to organize elections between two candidates for the position. Drnovšek, until then rather unknown to the public, defeated Marko Bulc, the Party's preferred candidate.
The Communist leaderships of other Yugoslav republics did not agree with this new way of selecting the representative to the Collective Presidency, so the Slovenian Republic Parliament had to confirm the result of the elections. Drnovšek served as chairman of the Collective Presidency from 1989–90. While he was chairman of the presidency, he was also chairman of the Non-Aligned Movement and the commander of the Yugoslav People's Army.
Until the end of communist rule he was an active member of the Communist Party. After the democratic changes in Slovenia, the country seceded from Yugoslavia. Following the Ten Day War, Drnovšek used his position in the Collective Presidency to help mediate the Brioni Agreement and to negotiate a peaceful withdrawal of Yugoslav army from Slovenia.
Prime Minister of Slovenia
In 1992, after a Government crisis in the DEMOS coalition, which had won the first democratic elections in Slovenia in 1990 and led the country to independence, Drnovšek became the second Prime Minister of independent Slovenia. He was chosen as a compromise candidate and an expert in economic policy.
His bi-partisan government was supported both by the left and centrist wing of the dissolved DEMOS coalition (the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia, the Democratic Party and the Greens of Slovenia) and by three parties that derived from organizations of the former Communist regime (the Liberal Democratic Party, the Party of Democratic Reform and the Socialist Party of Slovenia).
Shortly afterwards, Drnovšek was elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party (Liberalno demokratska stranka – LDS), the legal successor of the Association of Socialist Youth of Slovenia (Zveza socialistične mladine Slovenije – ZSMS), the youth fraction of the Communist Party of Slovenia.
In 1992, the Liberal Democratic Party under Drnovšek's leadership won the parliamentary elections, but due to a high fragmentation of the popular vote had to ally itself with other parties in order to form a stable government. Despite a politically turbulent mandate (in 1994, the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia left the coalition), the Party gained votes in 1996, remaining the largest party in the government.
Nevertheless, Drnovšek barely secured himself a third term in office after a failed attempt to ally himself with the Slovenian National Party. In 1997, the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia formed a coalition government with the populist Slovenian People's Party which finally enabled Drnovšek to serve a third term in office.
He headed the government until May 2000, when he stepped down due to disagreements with the Slovenian People's Party. After less than six months in opposition, Drnovšek returned to power in the autumn of 2000, after his party gained a clear victory in the parliamentary elections.