The SLS+SKD home page featured a humorous poll.

20 Like Children of the Lord, sons of the country, slaves to nobody, SKD in 1990.

The last were the leaders of the LDS (Janez Drnovšek) and SLS+SKD (Franc Zagožen).

21 For example SKD and SLS posters in 1992 (see, for example, Spahič, 2000, 82, 84).

In addition to the ZLSD and LDS, other parties also appeared in election confrontations on TV 3 (the pairs were confronted as follows, in order of appearance: LDS/SDS, ZLSD/ NSi, SDS/SLS+SKD, LDS/NSi, SLS+SKD/ZLSD, LDS/ZLSD, SDS/NSi, SLS+SKD/LDS, SDS/ZLSD, NSi/SLS+SKD). This was followed by extensive interviews with Andrej Bajuk, the Prime Minister, Franc Zagožen,the leader of the SLS+SKD, Franc Arhar, the Governor of the Bank of Slovenia, and Janez Janša, the leader of the SDS.

Direct aid to the newspaper in the form proposed by the former skd was, according to skd's data, available in Austria, The Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Finland, France, Italy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.

The polls on the SLS+SKD site demonstrated the expected bias in favor of the own party, and a very negative attitude towards the SDS.

In his opinion, Slovenec was equated with skd party, 'so the recent events left a blemish on the image of this political party' (Večer, 7 December 1996).

The SLS+SKD was most often associated with the notions of security, elections, stability, 'state-building', and the future (by 80% of the participants on average).

If the electoral body consisted of blondes only (124 visitors voted in this poll) the winner would be the NSi, followed by the SLS+SKD, and SDS in the third position.

The biggest shareholders in the consortium of owners of Slovenec d.o.o. were Slovene Christian Democratic Party (skd), Družina weekly magazine and several expatriates.

Even the Slovenian flag i.e. its color combination, is absent from this year's posters with the exception of the SLS+SKD logotype, but even there the missing emblem makes it incomplete.

The motif of interconnectedness (following the logic 'one from many') is obvious in a typical 'bridge-building' slogan of the SLS+SKD that runs 'Hold together!' and in group images on LDS and DeSUS posters.

What was particularly interesting/significant for our analysis were the sites of SLS+SKD and SDS because of the polls that were designed especially for the web site and published during the election campaign.

The visitors to the sites of the LDS, ZLSD, SDS, SLS+SKD People's Party and DeSUS could view their campaign materials (video spots, radio advertisements, posters, and the anthem3), the LDS, ZLSD and New Party sites were regularly updated not only with the news closely related to the election campaign but other topics as well, and the SLS+SKD's page had links to the majority of European Christian Democratic parties.

At that time Janez Janša, the leader of the SDS, Dr. Bajuk, the leader of the NSi, and Dr. Franc Zagožen,the leader of the SLS+SKD, had the meeting with Archbishop Rode, and the event received considerable media attention.

19 In contrast to other parties whose name includes only the adjective, i.e. Slovenian (e.g. SLS+SKD, SNS), or the noun in the genitive case translated into English by 'of' structure i.e. 'of Slovenia' (e.g. SDS, LDS, SMS, DeSUS).

The parties' 'personal´ identities more than obviously mark this year's election posters too: they are dominated by the portraits of the parties' notabilities (ZLSD, SDS, SNS), sometimes shown with their close collaborators (LDS, SLS+SKD).

The leaders of the two strongest parties, according to pre-election polls and election results, have even adopted similar postures - they both touch the chin with the fingers of the left hand, the same pose as one of the leading figures of the SLS+SKD.

The obstacles are: a heap of manure or a haystack with a hayfork (alluding to the SLS+SKD), a wooden cross, a blue-and-black battery (alluding to +/- sign on the posters of the ZLSD), and a red rose with protruding thorns (an allusion to the symbol used by the SDS).

In another poll on the SLS+SKD page the visitors were asked to associate notions from a list with individual parties. The list included security, elections, stability, 'statebuilding', the future, instability, 'non-state-building', lustration and a state of emergency.

Consequently, only 'Spring' parties such as the NSi, SDS and SLS+SKD appeared on this radio, so the live 'election contest' was staged between the first two parties mentioned on the one side, and the SLS+SKD on the other. Moreover, only the NSi and SDS received positive comments (without exception), while all other parties faced negative criticism (without exception). One should, however, keep in mind that it was precisely this radio station that accused the national TV stations of attempting to break down the 'Spring' bloc in its election broadcasts.

If the thesis of Hall Jamieson, that the present day campaigns are characterized by the tabloidization and personalization of politics, politicians and the political, holds true (Hall Jamieson, 2000), then SLS+SKD added a new aspect to the trivialization of political discourse - with a policy of jokes.

Only the LDS home page offered an on-line chat and a game, the SLS+SKD page featured polls based on a 'joke' of the day, the ZLSD invited random visitors to informally cooperate with the party (through the contribution of ideas and the like), the SDS had a forum where the visitor could post opinions relating to various questions.

The analysis of the pre-election web polls featured on the SLS+SKD and SDS web pages showed that those who voted in these polls were mostly the supporters of these parties. This shows that Slovenians are not yet active web voters and that the significance of the Internet in this election campaign was negligible even with respect to negative propaganda.

The same radio also released the ideologically most biased and methodologically disputable survey conducted in the pre-election period: according to this survey, the NSi would receive 50% of the votes, followed by the SDS with somewhat less than 20% of the votes and the SLS+SKD with 15% of the votes, while all other parties were expected to gather less than this or no votes at all.

However, the data of relevant European institutions and an exceptionally detailed report prepared by the research group of skd for the needs of parliament point to a different conclusion. Direct state aid is unknown in Germany, it does exist in Belgium but applies to the Flemish community exclusively, while in Italy and The Netherlands it is limited and given to political parties' papers only.

In November 1998 an mp of the former skd party proposed amendments to the Mass Media Act of 1994. According to this proposal, plurality and diversity of the mass media should be ensured through funding from the state budget in a way that the state should give financial aid to those media that are published in Slovenia, in Slovene language, deal predominantly with political events and have a circulation between 10,000 and 25,000.

The prevailing inexpressiveness of the visual language is reciprocated by slogans that are so clichéd that they could readily be attributed to any party of any political era or from any environment for that matter (only the names would be changed!): e.g. SLS+SKD For Slovenia with pride, LDS Slovenia Goes On!, SDS It's time for Slovenia, ZLSD Vote wisely!, DeSUS Vote for yourself! Vote for DeSUS! and NSi Words with value! All slogans point to the deficiencies of

The agreement on the army chaplains was signed in the preelection period, the representatives of the government who signed it were candidates in the elections (all are members of the same party), the agreement has been supported by the right-wing parties quite uncritically, all parties that supported it were in power, with the exception of the SLS+SKD, which was critical but less than other parties, while the pro-government press generally rejected criticism through political pamphlets.

Looking from the perspective of free elections, the most serious mistake was found on the ballots: the instructions opened with the guideline that one candidate (en kandidat) only may be circled. The Slovenian language, however, has different endings for the masculine and feminine gender of the noun, so 'en kandidat' is the masculine form while the feminine would be 'ena kandidatka'. As a matter of fact, there was a number of female candidates , among them the NSi, SDS, and SKD+SLS candidates.

A deputy from the sls skd (Slovenian People's Party and Christian Democrats of Slovenia) stated that in his opinion "opposition to the decision of the RTV Council was a threat to democracy". A deputy from the zlsd (The Social Democrats of Slovenia) was of the opinion that the re-appointment of the director-general should be approved .given the decision of the RTV Council, because this body has the power of decision while the National Assembly can only give its approval. (Delo, February 16, 2001).

Attention has been drawn to the absence of pluralism and the bias of the media. Criticism to this effect has been expressed by the Družina weekly newspaper and Radio Ognjišče - both are Church media - then by the parties on the right of the political spectrum (those parties made up the government in power and swore to support Christian values), and the Mag weekly magazine, which was expressly critical towards non-governmental parties and SKD+SLS, who distanced itself from the ruling coalition.

There are some glaringly contradictory points contained in this criticism, particularly that expressed by protagonists who most criticized the media. For example, when Janez Janša appeared on TV Slovenia he stated that 'this year's campaign has been the most correct one so far', and that 'the most correct electronic medium in the election campaign is TV Slovenia' (TV Slovenia, 13 October 2000); the Church weekly Družina, on the other hand, proclaimed the same TV channel to be the most incorrect one, because election confrontations were allegedly held 'in the absence of political content' so the viewers were 'forced' to be the witnesses to 'ruthless and uncivilized butchery' (1 October 2000); the representative of the SLS+SKD thought that the media published 'low blows' against their party 'particularly coming from the SDS', giving the paradoxical explanation that this was probably due to their 'cheering for LDS' (POP TV, 13 October 2000); in the same broadcast the representative of the governmental party NSi stated that the media were 'expressly against the right option', another of its representatives on TV 3 asserted that the 2000 election campaign was 'less aggressive than previous ones', while the representative of the SLS+SKD, which was in a coalition dispute with the NSi and SDS, agreed wholeheartedly with this view (TV 3, 6 October 2000).

The agreement was expressly supported by the Church and certain political parties such as the New Slovenia (NSi) and the Social Democratic Party (SDS), other political parties criticized it, most notably the united Slovenian People's Party and Slovenian Christian Democrats (SLS+SKD), and they drew attention to several disputable issues, while the Slovenian National Party (SNS) dismissed the agreement, entirely, radically and in general, stating that 'this is a dangerous precedence for the interference of the Vatican in Slovenian territory with the blessing of the Vatican, the Opus association and probably some American intelligence agency too, in collaboration with the extreme right-wing' (Večer, 3 October 2000).

Another leading theologian asserted that a part of the right-wing (SLS+SKD) had supported the ex-Communists, that it intentionally split the coalition and made people uninterested in the elections, which led to the establishment of NSi, a party whose function was to re-mobilize those that were disappointed; the same theologian designated the entire juridistiction as 'the transmission' of the Communist forces; in his opinion, the rejection of the majority voting system and Parliament's decision to adopt the proportional system was a fraud aimed at tearing apart the ruling right-wing coalition; he called the largest party (LDS) 'a party controlled by capital' that is related to the ex-Communist regime, and so on (Radio Ognjišče, 20 September 2000).

a The Delo newspaper dedicated a whole page to the selfpresentation of the leaders of various political parties. Only the leader of SDS did not respond because he publicly boycotts this newspaper. Delo left the space set aside for his party empty. Mag weekly magazine later commented on this empty column calling it a conspiracy of Delo against the said party and designated the president of the state Milan Kučan as the author of the conspiracy. In addition, the president was to be blamed for when Delo published a picture showing the leader of the SLS+SKD with the Pope during his visit to the Vatican (at the time of the election campaign), and also because Delo did not feature the picture of the NSi's leader who visited the Pope at roughly the same time, even though admittedly it was a 'closed doors visit' (Mag, 41/2000).

2 On the web conference the visitors could give their opinion about the following questions: What, in your opinion, should Bajuk's government accomplish before the end of its mandate? What do you think about the support that the group of MPs of SLS+SKD-The Slovenian People's Party, under the leadership of Dr. Franc Zagožen, gave to the constitutional changes through which the proportional system entered the Constitution despite the result of the referendum and the decision of the Constitutional Court which speak in favor of the two-round voting system? Do you support the proposal of the government of RS to reduce the number of ministerial sectors? Do you approve of the publishing of the names of all who did not pay tax? What do you think about the fact that Milan Kučan and Jorg Haider declared that the AVNOJ resolutions were political issue?