STA, 17 August 2020 - The council of the coalition Pensioners' Party (DeSUS) has postponed the vote on whether president Aleksandra Pivec should further enjoy the party's confidence, following the conflict of interest allegations, to next Tuesday. The session had been planned for this Thursday.
Speaking for the STA on Monday, DeSUS council president Tomaž Gantar, the health minister, said that a government session had been scheduled for Thursday, which was the reason why the council session had been postponed.
Next Tuesday is the deadline for the session to be held as requested by the DeSUS deputy group, which called on 10 August on Pivec, the agriculture minister, to resign as party leader after she had failed to provide adequate explanations to a series of recent revelations that raised questions about her ethical standards.
Pivec come under intense scrutiny following reports of semi-private trips, featuring her family and party members, being covered by a wine maker and a municipality.
The things got complicated when the executive committee of the coalition party called on the council to leave Pivec's dismissal for an extraordinary congress, which should be held as soon as possible and at which Pivec would ask for a vote of confidence.
The committee also took note of a legal opinion on the matter, which unofficially says that the council cannot dismiss the president. It was agreed that a party vice-president will serve as a liaison with the deputy group until the congress.
Gantar meanwhile insists that the council has the power to take a no-confidence vote in the party leader. He said on Friday that he would also get a legal opinion and would not put the dismissal to vote if the opinion contradicted his position.
He added at the time that the party congress was not intended for deciding on a vote of no-confidence in the president, and that under the party's statute, this is something that the council could do between two congresses.
According to the newspaper Delo, Pivec has announced that she would fight until the end, and is accusing Gantar of trying to steal the mandate away from her together with some other party members.
She said that Gantar offering himself to head the party was unlawful and a conscious violation of the statute, in reference of Gantar saying he was willing to take over until the congress if the council members decided so.
In response, Gantar said that no one had invented the scandals Pivec had entangled herself in, and noted that the low approval rating of the party following the recent turmoil in the party did not surprise him.
Pivec was also critical in the statement for Delo of deputy group leader Franc Jurše, saying that he did not understand politics.
She said that he had stood by the side of the former DeSUS president Karl Erjavec during all scandals, and "now he is calling on me to resign even if I haven't done anything illegal and no Slovenian suffered a euro in damage".
A poll carried out by Mediana and run by the newspaper Delo today meanwhile showed that around 59% of those polled said Pivec should resign as party leader and as minister.
The survey, which polled 505 adults between 12 and 13 August, also showed that over 50% think that pensioners need their own political party.
