By DPA
Ljubljana : Just months before Slovenia assumes the six-month chairmanship of the European Union, the country is aware that it has misplaced its ailing president Janez Drnovsek, last seen in public in late July.
Alarm bells rang when he cancelled a scheduled meeting with visiting Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi last month. He has not been seen or issued any communications since then.
Explanations that something “unexpected” came up and that he was “enjoying a vacation” have not satisfied anyone.
A claim by his aides that he has moved out of the presidential palace in Ljubljana to escape the noise of renovation work also failed to appease the public, experts and politicians alike.
Though accustomed to their president’s peculiar mannerisms, the burning question is: “Where is Drnovsek?”
Slovenians are acutely aware that he has been seriously ill and fighting cancer for years, thus making the question of his whereabouts even more pressing.
“The public has the right to know details of the health of directly elected officials,” the daily Delo quoted a communications expert, Jaka Repansek, as saying.
But Drnovsek has adamantly sidestepped enquiries with what has become a trademark response: “I feel healthy, so I am healthy.”
A former prime minister who has been president since 2002, Drnovsek, 57, last year said that he had got tired of politics and decided not to seek re-election in presidential polls scheduled for Oct 21.
During his term, he has strayed full circle from his image of an efficient technocrat, which made him popular among voters but has irritated his political allies and foes alike. All of them have criticised his handling of the job and his health.
In 1999, Drnovsek had to undergo surgery to have a kidney removed, but a cancerous growth was discovered elsewhere two years later. Yet, since then he has loudly denounced classical medicine and turned to alternative therapy.
He became a bread-baking vegan and dabbled in Buddhism, all the while writing one book per year on spirituality.
He left his Liberal Democracy party, with which he has led Slovenia to NATO and EU membership, and founded the Movement for Justice and Development, a non-political organisation that seeks to “raise human consciousness and make the world a better place”.
In a bid to achieve this objective, he has fought against discrimination of marginalized ethnic groups such as the Roma and has tried launching initiatives to resolve the problems of Darfur and Kosovo.
His unpredictable turns have alienated Drnovsek from the Slovenian political mainstream and plunged him into a conflict with conservative Prime Janez Jansa’s government.
Eventually, Jansa blocked the appointment of the central bank chief, nominated by Drnovsek, this year. The national intelligence service SOVA became embroiled in a simmering tapping scandal as collateral damage of the Jansa-Drnovsek conflict.
A glance at Drnovsek’s Internet blog depicts Jansa as the “prince of darkness” and the former as the “prince of light.”
Now it remains to be seen whether Drnovsek would, as one of his advisors promised, make a public appearance next week for the scheduled reception of a real prince, Britain’s Prince Andrew, and then bring his term as the head of state to an end.