Janez Drnovšek

In 1999, Drnovšek had kidney cancer resulting in the removal of a kidney. In 2001, he had cancerous formations on his lungs and liver. He repeatedly claimed nature was the best cure, and spent most of his days at his home in Zaplana. He died there on February 23, 2008, aged 57. His body was cremated shortly afterwards. His remains were buried with honors in a private memorial service in his native Zagorje ob Savi, alongside his parents.

The tension reached its apex in May 2007, when the newly appointed director of the Slovenian Intelligence and Security Agency Matjaž Šinkovec unclassified several documents from the period before 2004, revealing, among other, that Drnovšek had used secret service funds for personal purposes between 2002-04. The President reacted with a harsh criticism of the government's policies, accusing the ruling coalition of abusing its power for personal delegitimations and labeled the then current Prime Minister Janez Janša as "the leader of the negative guys"

Drnovšek's presidency was highly controversial. In the first three years in office, he rarely appeared in public, save for the most important official duties. In 2006, however, a change of style became visible. He launched several campaigns in foreign policy, such as a failed humanitarian mission to Darfur and a proposal for the solution of the political crisis in Kosovo. On January 30, 2006, he left the Liberal Democracy of Slovenia. Shortly afterwards, he founded the Movement for Justice and Development and became its first president. He claimed this was not meant to be a political movement, but rather a wide initiative, aiming to "raise human consciousness and make the world a better place". On June 26, 2006, he announced that he would not be running for a second term in an interview on TV Slovenia.

A major clash between the two happened in Summer 2006, when disagreement arose over Drnovšek's attempt to intervene in the Darfur conflict. The disagreements moved from issues of domestic politics in October 2006, when Drnovšek publicly criticised the treatment of the Strojans, a Romani family whose neighborhood had forced them to relocate, which in turn had subjected them to police supervision and limitation of movement.

In the beginning of his term, Drnovšek, who was ill with kidney cancer, stayed out of public view. When he reemerged in late 2005 he had already changed his lifestyle: he had become a vegan (though one of his colleagues in a televised interview mentioned their regular Sunday visits to a pizzeria in Maxi market, Ljubljana), moved out of the capital into the countryside, and withdrew from party politics completely, ending his already frozen membership in the Liberal Democracy. Drnovšek's new approach to politics prompted one political commentator to nickname him "Slovenia's Gandhi".

In 2005, he found out about the existence of a daughter, Nana Forte, otherwise a renowned composer. His sister is Helena Drnovšek Zorko, who has been the Slovenian ambassador in Japan since September 2010.

The 2004 legislative election brought further changes and a political swing to the right. Janez Janša, the leader of a right-wing coalition, formed the new government. In Slovenia, this was the first time after 1992 that the President and the Prime Minister had represented opposing political factions for more than a few months. Between 2002-04, the relationship between President Drnovšek and Janez Janša, then leader of the opposition, were considered more than good and in the first year of cohabitation, no major problems arose.

The relationship between Drnovšek and the government quickly became tense. Disagreements began with Drnovšek's initiatives in foreign politics, aimed at solving major foreign conflicts, including those in Darfur and Kosovo. Initially, these initiatives were not openly opposed by the Prime Minister Janez Janša, but were criticized by the foreign minister Dimitrij Rupel, Drnovšek's former collaborator and close political ally until 2004.

Drnovšek was a staunch supporter of Slovenia's entry in the European Union and NATO and was largely responsible for Slovenia's successful bid for membership in both of those organizations. As Prime minister, he was frequently active on foreign policy issues. On 16 June 2001, he helped to arrange the first meeting of the U.S. President George W. Bush with the Russian President Vladimir Putin, which was held in the Upper Carniolan estate of Brdo pri Kranju. (Bush-Putin 2001) In 2002, he ran for President of Slovenia, and was elected in the second round, defeating the center-right candidate Barbara Brezigar.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Unlike the other five former Yugoslav republics which were run for much of the 1990s by frequently authoritarian presidents, Slovenia under Drnovšek's premiership quickly emerged from the break-up of the federation as a functioning parliamentary democracy. Drnovšek's political strategy was concentrated on broad coalitions, transcending ideological and programmatic divisions between parties.

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.

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.

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.

Janez Drnovšek (Slovene pronunciation: [ˈjàːnɛz dəɾˈnɔ́ːwʃək]; 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).

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.