Slovenians were voting in snap parliamentary elections Sunday, called early after the former government failed to pass an austerity package in September, dpa repoted. Some 19 per cent of the 1.6 million registered voters had cast their ballots by noon, the state election commission said. Polling began at 7 am and was scheduled to end at 7 pm (1800 GMT). Local media reported an incident in the town of Trzic, where police were investigating the theft of 100 ballots. However, the incident cannot affect the overall outcome of the election. The election was forced early when Social Democratic Prime Minister Borut Pahor failed to push an austerity package through parliament in September. The conservative former premier Janez Jansa's Democratic Party is tipped as the certain winner, but probably not with enough of a majority to form a cabinet without coalition partners. Two new parties, one of the Ljubljana Mayor Zoran Jankovic and the other of businessman Gregor Virant, were expected to win enough seats to possibly play a role in the building of a governing coalition. Slovenia, a former Yugoslav republic that joined EU in 2004 and the eurozone in 2007, is now under threat of a spiraling recession because of unchecked spending and too much borrowing. The next cabinet faces a difficult task of turning the situation by reforming the pension system, state administration and the state economy, and all of it effectively without additional borrowing.
