Janez Janša, Slovenian politician, 5th Prime Minister of Slovenia
Ivan Janša (Slovene: [ˈíːʋan ˈjàːnʃa]; born 17 September 1958), baptized and best known as Janez Janša (Slovene: [ˈjàːnɛs]), is a Slovenian politician who is currently serving as prime minister of Slovenia, a position he had previously also held from 2004 to 2008, and from 2012 to 2013. Since 1993, Janša has led the Slovenian Democratic Party, which has emerged as the pre-eminent Slovenian conservative party.Janša served as Minister of Defence from 1990 to 1994, a post he had also held during the Slovenian War of Independence. Janša served as prime minister from 2004 to 2008, and again became prime minister in 2012, following an early election in December 2011. On 27 February 2013, Janša's second government was ousted in a vote of non-confidence. In June 2013, Janša was sentenced to two years in prison on corruption charges. The ruling was confirmed by Slovenia's higher court in April 2014, but after the Constitutional Court of Slovenia ordered a retrial for procedural reasons, the case later expired. Despite his party winning a plurality of votes in the 2018 Slovenian parliamentary election, Janša was initially passed over as a prime minister candidate as most parties refused to join a Janša-led government because of Janša's extremist views. After spending years in opposition, Janša was selected as prime minister-designate in March 2020 following the resignation of prime minister Marjan Šarec.A communist in his youth, Janša's political stance has drifted rightward during the course of his political career, from a liberal, pro-democracy dissident under communist rule, to a social democrat politician, and to a right-wing hardliner. Janša has more recently been described as a far-right leader by The Independent and by Foreign Policy. His style of politics has been compared to Donald Trump. He has been dubbed a "MAGA-style populist" by NPR, "the Slovenian Trump" by Der Spiegel, and "mini-Trump" by Deutsche Welle. Following the 2020 United States presidential election, Janša declared Trump the winner, and proceeded to tweet a series of conspiracy theories about the election. Janša is a close ally of Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán.