Lojze Peterle

Alojz "Lojze" Peterle (born 5 July 1948) is a Slovenian politician and diplomat. He was the leader of the Slovene Christian Democrats from the founding of the party in 1990 until it merged with the Slovenian People's Party in 2000, and he was among those who led Slovenia to independence from Yugoslavia.

Leader of the Christian Democrats (1990-2000)

Peterle became prime minister of Slovenia in May 1990 after parliamentary elections of April 1990 won by the DEMOS coalition (which included Christian Democrats and was created in the opposition to the Communist rule). In 1991, the DEMOS-led Slovene Parliament declared the country's independence from Yugoslavia, in compliance with the result of a referendum held in December the previous year. He served as prime minister until May 1992, when due to an internal crisis in the DEMOS coalition, a new coalition government under Janez Drnovšek was established. In the elections of 1992, the Christian Democrats gained some support and became the second largest party in a highly fragmented National Assembley, after the Liberal Democratic Party. The Christian Democrats entered a cross-party coalition with the Liberal Democrats and the United List of Social Democrats (former Communist Party of Slovenia) under the leadership of Janez Drnovšek. Peterle served as deputy prime minister and foreign minister from January 1993 until October 1994. Tensions were deep in the coalition, however, and Peterle resigned from his posts in 1994 when Drnovšek nominated Jožef Školč, a member of his own Liberal Democratic Party, to be speaker of Parliament, against the wishes of Peterle who believed that a Christian Democrat should be speaker. The Christian Democrats did remain in the coalition, which was often divided over specific policy issues. In 1996, Peterle called for the dismissal of foreign minister Zoran Thaler because of his belief that Thaler did not do enough to help Slovenia's relations with Italy.

In 1996 elections, Peterle's party suffered a decisive defeat, losing popular support to the other two centre-right parties, the Social Democratic Party of Slovenia and the Slovene People's Party, that had remained in the opposition and had criticised what they called a "unprincipled coalition between Christian Democraty and former Communists".

Between 1996 and 2000, the Christian Democrats remained in opposition, and Peterle's leadership was frequently challenged by different fractions within the party. He nevertheless managed to remain the chairman of the Party until 2000, when the Christian Democrats merged with the Slovenian People's Party, which had until then supported Janez Drnovšek's third term as Prime Minister. As a consequence, Drnovšek's government fell in 2000, and Peterle became foreign minister again in the short-lived centre-right government of Andrej Bajuk from June 2000 to November 2000. Peterle's diplomatic policy has always been that Slovenia should try to gain good relations with other countries, especially the VaticanFact|date=November 2007 and secure Slovenia's reputation in the international community.

After the elections of 2000

Due to a disagreement over the election legislation, Peterle left the Slovene People's Party shortly after its unification with the Christian Democrats and joined the newly founded New Slovenia Christian People's Party. In the elections of 2000, both of Slovenia's conservative and christian democratic parties suffered a defeat against Drnovšek's Liberal Democracy of Slovenia, while the Slovenian Social Democratic Party assumed the undisputed leadership of the centre-right opposition.

In the 2004 elections to the European Parliament, Peterle was elected for the New Slovenia Christian People's Party, a member of the European People's Party (EPP). In March 2006, he was elected as Vice President of the European People's Party for a three-year term after recovering from allegations of a sex scandal in April 2003.

In November 2006, he announced that he will be running for President of Slovenia in the 2007 presidential election. He was considered the front-runner before the first round of the election, but ultimately lost in a landslide to Danilo Türk in the second round.

External links

* [http://www.peterle.si/ Official Website]
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